A Spookies Compendium

by David Robinson

  “Thank God you’re not in the army anymore, Albert,” he muttered to himself.

  Flutter-Bys was not a large place and checking it out would take only a matter of minutes. After Bilks’ efforts in that same place in the early hours of yesterday morning, Fishwick was more interested in what the furious spirit was up to.

  Fishwick was not as concerned for Sceptre as he had been. If Bilks’ slow departure were a feint, designed to get Fishwick away from the manor, it served only to underline Bilks’ lack of experience in the astral plane. Fishwick could get back to his mistress’ side from the moon in considerably less than a second. If Bilks decided to double back to the manor, Fishwick could still be there ahead of him.

  He was surprised when Bilks swooped down on Flutter-Bys.

  “Two birds and a single stone,” Fishwick chuckled as he followed the angry ball of fire down.

  He noticed a large van pulling out of the rear yard as he dropped through the roof. The driver looked like the gangster Wilcox.

  Dropping into the clubroom, Fishwick found it full. A strictly male membership sat around the tables. Some were dining, others playing cards, shooting craps, playing the roulette wheel. In direct contravention of recently passed anti-smoking laws, a thick haze of cigarette smoke clung to the ceiling; on the tiny stage, a young, scantily-clad woman writhed and wriggled in a lewd dance to background music. Occasionally, men would throw five or ten pound notes on the stage, and she would turn her attention in their direction, as if she were dancing specifically for them.

  “Nought like that in your day, Albert,” Fishwick muttered.

  Bilks was nowhere to be found in this room. Fishwick ducked into the cellars. As he did so, Bilks’ furious form hurtled from the cold store, blazing scarlet with anger.

  “WIGJAM!” he roared.

  “All right, me old sparrow. Try to calm down.” For days now Fishwick had tried to calm Bilks without success, and Fishwick suspected he would do no better now.

  He was right. As he suggested it, Bilks roared again and again – aimed at the cold store. Instead of passing through the door, he hit it hard. It shook violently. To Fishwick’s mystification, Bilks struck again and again and again, and still nothing happened.

  “What are you trying to do?” asked Fishwick. He waited to see if the tremors produced by the repeated battering of the larder would be noticed upstairs. No one came to investigate, and Fishwick decided that they were too busy with their eating, drinking, gambling and ogling to notice.

  The penny dropped. He understood Bilks’ activity. “You want to open it? Let me show you how.”

  The ball of energy backed off its colour, settling into an irritated orange.

  “If you calmed down, you’d learn,” Fishwick said as he positioned himself in front of the huge door. With a deft movement of his arm, he flicked the handle and the door opened. Bilks’ colour shot up the scale to crimson, and he rushed past Fishwick into the room. He tore at the cartons of DVDs, he ripped cartons of foodstuffs apart. In seconds, the floor of the cellar in the immediate vicinity of the cold store was covered in a mess of milk, butter, yoghurt, and DVDs.

  Fishwick was puzzled. “What are you looking for?”

  “WIGJAM!”

  “Wigjam?” Fishwick mulled over the word for a moment and then his entire energy form brightened. “I get it.”

  *****

  At Melmerby Manor, Kevin and Sceptre worked quickly, hooking their computer into the PA system and running secreted cables up to the attics. Once in the old nursery, Kevin set up his own laptop and booted it up to test the links.

  “The cables are not that difficult to spot, and they’ll lead Wilcox and his people right to us,” he complained.

  “Good. If they do, we’ll be ready for them, won’t we? Now, are you sure you can drive the system from here?”

  “If Wilcox can do it from his club, I can do it from here,” Kevin boasted, “and we’ll test it in a few minutes. But it’s not gonna scare them, Sceptre, because they’ll know we’re scamming them. They set it up in the first place.”

  “It’s not supposed to scare them,” she told him. “It’s supposed to bring them upstairs, and we will be ready for them when they get here.”

  “How?”

  She smiled secretively. “You’ll see. Fishwick?” The call to her butler was greeted with stony silence. Sceptre’s face fell. “Oh dear. He’s not there.”

  Kevin snorted. “He wouldn’t be, would he? It’s not so long since you sent him off to Flutter-Bys.”

  Sceptre shrugged. “He’ll be back. I’m sure he will.”

  Kevin was not impressed. Bent over the keyboard, he muttered to himself. “A spook for support? On the whole, I think I’d rather have the Marines.”

  The computer screen came alive. Hooking his mobile phone into the Internet connection, Kevin booted up the media package, ran through the various direct links to the Melmerby system and hit ‘play’. Somewhere far below, in the house, they hear the sound of heavy breathing interspersed with the strange word.

  “WIGJAM... WIGJAM... WIGJAM...”

  Kevin shuddered and shut down the connection. “There you go. Works like a charm.”

  Sceptre rubbed her hands with un-aristocratic glee. “Then we’re ready. All we have to do is sit it out here and wait for Wilcox and friends to turn up and Fishwick to come back to help us.”

  Kevin swallowed hard. “I prefer people on my side. Especially when they’re called Pete Brennan.”

  Sceptre ignored him and switched on her flashlight. “Right, come on, let’s shut the lights down.”

  Again Kevin swallowed. “And we’ll be in the dark too? I don’t think I wanna be a ghost hunter anymore.”

  *****

  As the vehicle began to move, Pete took in his surroundings. There were no windows in the back of the van, and the only light came from a tiny, overhead bulb. The metal interior walls of the van were lined with metal support struts running from floor to roof, spaced about half a metre apart, each one ten centimetres wide. When carrying items of furniture or heavy cartons, the struts could be used to anchor securing straps.

  The set-up confirmed his opinion of Wilcox. An idiot. By spreading his forces so thinly, he had given Pete the chance of escape. An organised mobster would have stayed in the back of the van himself instead of leaving the job to two hopelessly inefficient goons like Groom and Lawson.

  Sitting to one side, as soon as they moved off, Pete began rubbing the wire binding his wrists against the blunt edge of a single strut. The movement was unobtrusive, and to Groom and Lawson, it looked as if Pete were simply being jerked around by the unsteady movement of the van on the roads.

  With no windows in the van to let him see their progress to the manor, he could only guess where they were, and the weather did not help. The journey usually took 20 minutes, but a dusting of snow in Ashdale would mean several centimetres on the moors, which would slow them down.

  While he worked at the bindings, he turned over his precarious situation in his mind. He needed to be free of the wrist bindings, he needed to take out Groom and Lawson, and he needed to attract attention so he could lure Wilcox into opening the back door, so he would have the opportunity to fight his way to freedom. But he was hopelessly outnumbered, and they were armed. If he escaped in an open area like the moors, they could easily gun him down. To have a chance, he had to let them get all the way to the manor, with its multiple rooms and its dark wine cellar, before he tried to escape.

  The timing, however, would be critical. Once out of the van, he would have to get to cover on foot. If he left the vehicle too early, even if they had made it to the Melmerby property, it would be too easy for them to bring him down before he could gain the shelter of one of the structures. And if they gave up on him, he would not be able to get there in time to prevent Wilcox murdering Sceptre and Kevin.

  The bumps in the road began to get worse. They were out of town on the less well-maintained highways of the moors now.
The vehicle slowed down. Pete guessed that the deeper snow was causing Wilcox (and Tate up ahead) to take it more slowly. The last thing they wanted was to have two vehicles stuck out here with three dead bodies lying around.

  If they were on the moors, then even at a slower speed, they would reach Melmerby Manor in a matter of five or ten minutes. Over the course of their journey so far, which he guessed to be about half an hour, ignoring the cutting pain in his skin, he could feel his bonds thinning and beginning to stretch. The wire was a long way from breaking, but that no longer mattered. It had to be now.

  Pressing his back to the van wall, he began pushing himself up into a standing position.

  “Siddown,” growled Groom.

  Pete glared. “I’m stretching my legs.”

  “I said siddown.”

  “And if I don’t? What you gonna do? Kill me?”

  Groom leapt to his feet... just too late. Pete was already upright, and as the thug came at him, he sidestepped. Groom hit the sidewall of the van and turned, in time for Pete to bring up a well-aimed knee into his breastbone.

  Groom crashed to the floor, clutching his chest.

  From the corner of his eye, Pete saw Lawson raise his pistol, and in that second, Pete knew he was lost.

  *****

  Fishwick followed Bilks from Flutter-Bys back towards the manor. Crossing the moors, he noticed the large van making its slow way through the snow.

  “I wonder,” he muttered. He watched Bilks’ form moving away from him. Fishwick experienced a moment of indecision. Bilks represented a danger to the mistress, but this van had come from Flutter-Bys, and that, too, could mean danger. He decided that the mistress and Miss Aggie could handle Bilks, and that whoever was in the van was probably the greater danger, and Madam would be more grateful for the reconnaissance. He swooped down to hover in front of the moving vehicle.

  It was a tricky manoeuvre, hovering in front of the windscreen so he could check on the occupants, he moving backwards while the vehicle continued on its way, but Fishwick had not been on the spirit plane for 90-odd years without learning a trick or two.

  Wilcox was behind the wheel, while his hideous wife sat in the passenger seat fiddling with the radio. Fishwick was puzzled. It seemed unlikely that a gangster like this would come here with only his wife for company, so where were their henchmen? Ahead of the van, he noticed a car. He rushed after it. Before he got there, he realised it was Pete Brennan’s. Curious. Surely Mr. Brennan had not gone over to the opposition.

  Fishwick dropped into the car and took the rear seat. Johnny and Nicky Tate. So, like Wilcox’s minders, Pete was AWOL. Where could they all be?

  Logic answered the question. The back of the van, of course. If it was loaded with pallets of goods, Pete was probably hidden amongst them waiting to spring a surprise when he got to the manor. Fishwick smiled at the notion. He liked Pete. There were times when he wished the mistress would take to him as well.

  He was about to zoom off to Melmerby Manor when he realised that his mistress would be most displeased if he had not confirmed his suspicion. He shot back to the van, through the cab and into the rear in time to see Lawson pull out a pistol and aim it at Pete.

  The van was lurching from side to side. Pete had just floored Groom and was hampered by his hands tied behind his back, whereas Lawson was leaning against the van wall, quite steady on his feet, and from a range of three metres, he could not miss.

  Fishwick had a split second in which to act. He rushed Lawson, knocked the pistol from his hand, and then flew out of the van into the night. Turning quickly, he rushed at the vehicle again and, taking a leaf from Bilks’ book, hammered into the side of it. The van rocked, its rear end lurching to the right before Wilcox righted it again.

  Dropping back into the van, Fishwick took in the scene and saw that Pete was now in control of the situation. Time to get back to the mistress. Fishwick left the van and took off for the manor.

  *****

  Pete was expecting nothing but the pain of a bullet tearing into him when two things happened so quickly that he was not sure of the order in which they occurred.

  It seemed to him that Lawson dropped the pistol and then, a second later, the van lurched to the right, causing Lawson to lose his balance.

  The sudden movement threw Pete too, slamming him into the side wall. He twisted away from the reeling thug and lashed out a foot, barking Lawson’s shin.

  With the vehicle throwing them around, Lawson stood groggily. Pete tucked himself into a corner to maintain his balance, summoned his strength and launched himself. He landed a foot in Lawson’s midriff. Groom was up, coming at Pete head down. Pete sidestepped and, as Groom passed him, kicked out. His boot propelled the thug into the forward bulkhead. Groom’s head collided with a loud bang. And the vehicle came to a sliding halt, throwing Pete back to the floor. Lawson was crawling across the van floor reaching for his pistol. Pete pushed himself up, rushed, kicked the gun away and brought his boot down on Lawson’s hand, crushing it and dragging a scream of agony from the thug. To silence him, Pete kicked him on the jaw.

  Catching his breath, Pete chuckled. “I always said I could beat you two with both hands tied behind my back.”

  Pete heard the cab doors slam as Wilcox and Sylvie got out.

  With the babysitters temporarily out of commission, Pete’s concern switched to Wilcox and his gun.

  “You’re still tied up, buddy,” he said to himself.

  He scooted to the rear of the van. He could hear Wilcox manipulating the locking mechanism of the sliding rear door. He lay on his back, his legs bent, muscles tensed.

  “I’ll shoot that Brennan right here and now if he’s causing grief,” he heard Wilcox curse.

  As the shutter came up, Pete lashed out with both feet simultaneously. He caught Sylvie square in the face with his right boot. She went down. His left foot kicked the automatic from Wilcox’s hand and sent it spinning into the road. Pete flung himself out, landed feet first, then dropped and rolled on hard-packed snow between Wilcox and the pistol. Half-crouched, Wilcox reached across him for the gun, clearly visible in the illumination from the rear lights of the van. Still prone, Pete kicked the pistol away and, tensing his neck muscles, raised his head to butt Wilcox. Behind and above him, he could see a dark shape launching from the back of the van. Groom or Lawson? It didn’t matter. Pete rolled away; the unidentified thug landed in the snow, slipped and sat down unexpectedly.

  Gathering his wits, Pete forced himself up and ran.

  “Get after him,” he heard Wilcox yell.

  You’re running in the wrong direction. The thought smashed into his brain. He looked over his shoulder as he continued to run. It was pitch dark. He could see nothing but the van’s rear lights, and movement in their dim glow.

  “What the hell’s going on?” he heard Tate ask, as if he had just arrived.

  “Brennan’s out,” he heard Wilcox reply. “I told you to get after him, Tommy.”

  Lawson’s reply was lost as Pete slipped in the snow and rolled off down a steep gully.

  They must have heard the rustle of bushes as he rolled through them, for the next thing he heard was Wilcox urging, “He’s over there. Get him.”

  Pete staggered to his feet and ran along the bottom of the gully. It was pitch dark. He could see nothing other than the snowflakes falling just in front of him; all he could hear were Lawson’s footsteps padding along the road above the gully. Pete stumbled again and rolled into a thicket. Lawson was getting nearer. The red lights of the van were now fifty metres away, but he couldn’t make out Lawson’s figure. Pete smiled to himself. If he could not see Lawson in the darkness, then Lawson could not see him. He lay stock still, holding his breath. The footsteps passed and faded. Soon they returned, going the other way, and then there came the noise of conversation.

  “I can’t see him, boss. He could be halfway to Ashdale by now.”

  “On foot? In this weather?” snapped Wilcox. “All right,” he
sighed. “Let’s just get up to the hall and deal with the other two.”

  “But if he calls the cops …”

  “How many phone boxes do you think there are out here in the middle of nowhere, you idiot?” Wilcox interrupted. “Anyway, I know Brennan. He’ll come to the hall to rescue his pals, and we’ll get him then. Come on.”

  Pete heard more commotion as they climbed into their vehicles, and soon both the car and the van drove off.

  Frantically now, Pete struggled to his feet and felt around for a stout branch in the thicket. Anything to help free his wrists of the wire bonds.

  After suffering many scratches on his hands, he found a suitable branch, hooked his bindings over it and began to work. It hurt: every movement sent spears of pain lancing through his wrists. The wire bit ever deeper into his skin, and the thin cuts, already sore, began to bleed. Several times, the bite of cold and the wire brought him to the brink of agonised tears, but he persevered. He had to move quickly. If he did not, Kevin and Sceptre would soon be joining Fishwick... and although he did not believe in Fishwick, he would rather argue with his two friends about it than send them across to prove his point.

  Then, suddenly, the wire gave and he was free. Blood ran down his wrists. More than he would have expected, but not enough to bring him to a dead faint. He fished in his pocket for a tissue, pressed it against each wrist in turn to stem the flow of blood. He dismissed his minor injuries and released the anger that had been bottled inside since the confrontation in Flutter-Bys’ cellar. It was time to bring his specialist skills in mayhem to bear on Wilcox and his team.

  In a crouch, he climbed up the embankment, slipped once in the deepening snow, and tried again. He slipped yet again. This time, he pressed himself flat to the ground, ignoring the freezing temperatures and the damp soaking through his coat to the shirt beneath, and crawled up to the road. In the darkness he could not see which way he needed to go. He paused a moment. The gully had been on his left when he ran, so that meant the manor must be to the right. He turned and ran. He had no idea how far it was. A kilometre? Two? Three? Would he be in time? If they got to Kevin and Sceptre first... He closed his mind to the thought.