Village of Ghosts

by Ralph E. Vaughan

  “You knew him?” Ravyn asked.

  “Not as well as I would have liked,” Allen admitted. “I was Sexton for this church as well, though only on a very part time basis…just to help out when my duties at St Mary allowed.”

  “That seems unusual,” Ravyn remarked.

  “Quite honestly, I was underutilised at Middleton-on-Orm,” Allen explained. “St Mary’s is a very prosperous church, well set with a large support staff.”

  “To go from Sexton to Vicar…” Ravyn let the query hang.

  “Underutilised, overqualified,” he said. “I should have been elevated long ago, but…” He sighed. “It’s not for me to question the will of God. I serve where I am sent.”

  “And now you are sent here.”

  “Both the Bishop and my vicar thought me suited to the task of taking over St Barnabas and serving Little Wyvern,” Allen said. “I was well trained in ecclesiastical matters, I was familiar with the situation, and my opposition to all forms of supernaturalism was well known. It was thought I might provide the firm hand Reverend Ormsby held back.”

  “Still, with so many aspirants in search of a parish…”

  “Quite honestly, Mr Ravyn,” Allen said, “no one wanted it.”

  Ravyn’s eyebrows raised quizzically.

  “It is small and unimportant, not suited for anyone with eyes upward, if you know what I mean,” Allen said. “Thaddeus had been here more than fifty years. He came young, died old—the fate of anyone given this church.”

  “That does not bother you?”

  Allen clasped his hands, inclined his head slightly. “I go where I am sent. I serve where I am needed. God will provide.”

  “How did you meet the deceased?” Stark asked.

  Allen unclasped his hands and looked at the sergeant in surprise. “I didn’t meet him. Well, yes, I encountered him, but with the group of deluded sheep he was leading about.”

  “What happened?” Ravyn asked.

  “I was crouching behind the wall near the lychgate when they came up.” Seeing their expressions, he added: “I feared they might try to enter the church itself. The Council, at my urging, agreed they had no business in the church or cellar and limited their permit to the graveyard only—even that was too much. Still, I feared they might try to enter the sanctuary. If they had not, I would have moved away and they would never have known I was there. As it turned out, I was correct in my apprehension.”

  “They actually tried to effect entry?” Ravyn asked.

  “Well, no,” Allen admitted. “But they wanted to. They insisted they see all the so-called ‘church ghosts’ in their brochures. Lies!” He composed himself. “When the matter arose, I made my presence known, quashed the idea before it had a chance to take hold. Had I not, who knows what sacrileges would have occurred?”

  “Some thought you a ghost,” Ravyn remarked.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Some still think you might be.”

  “Yeah, jumping out of a graveyard like the Grim Reaper,” Stark said. “Lucky some of the more gullible didn’t pop off.”

  “Don’t be impertinent with…”

  “Tell us about your conversation with Mr Jones,” Ravyn said.

  “Conversation?” Allen turned at Ravyn’s sharp tone. “I had no conversation. I said they were not allowed to enter the church.”

  Ravyn glanced at Stark, who pulled a notebook from his pocket. He made a great show of looking through it.

  “Most said you engaged Jones in conversation.”

  “No, they are mistaken,” Allen said. “Mr Jones said something about guides, about spectral realms and other rubbish. To tell you the truth, I wasn’t listening. I had seen Agnes Swanner start forward. My only thought was to flee.” He took in a deep breath and let it out slowly, thinking of the juggernaut he had escaped. “She is quite a formidable woman.”

  “And then?” Stark urged.

  “Then, nothing, Sergeant,” Reverend Allen said. “I wanted no part of those bloody…blasted FOG people, least of all Agnes.”

  “Did you know Simon Jones?” Ravyn asked.

  The vicar shook his head. “I knew they had hired someone to lead the Ghost Tour, but I did not know who it was.”

  “After you fled, where did you go?”

  “To the church,” he replied. “I barred the door. I did not stir from the church until the police arrived.”

  “What?” Stark asked. “Not even when you heard someone had been killed?”

  “It was none of my business,” Allen asserted. “Besides, some of the tour people might have used to confusion to get inside to see the ghosts they imagine are here.”

  “They might have felt safer inside.”

  “Not part of my flock.”

  “Well, you’re just brimming with the milk of human kindness, aren’t you, Vicar?” Stark said.

  The reverend flushed crimson. He started to stand, fists balled.

  “Please be seated, Vicar,” Ravyn said. “My sergeant is blunt at times, but his point is well taken. They were afraid.”

  “The people were grouped together, thus were in no immediate danger.” He sat, unballed his fists and gazed evenly across his desk. “I observed mobiles being used, thus there was no need for anyone to utilise the telephone. I heard Mr Jones was dead. Him being who and what he was, I knew there was no need to administer last rites to him. Quite honestly, Mr Ravyn, I saw and heard nothing to make anything of the unpleasant situation my business.”

  Stark glared.

  “You were in a position to see the people?” Ravyn asked.

  “Yes, through the window nearest the door,” Allen replied. “An hysterical women was being restrained by two men I believe to have been drunk. Others were on their mobiles. Some were beating on the door, demanding entrance.”

  “Were all the members of the tour present?”

  “I did not count heads, but there seemed to be as many outside the door as were at the lychgate,” Allen said. “Excepting Mr Jones.”

  “Did anyone join them late?”

  “I heard screaming from the graveyard, then saw them surge toward the church en masse,” he said. “All but four—the screaming woman pulled along by the two drunks, accompanied by Agnes, but they were only seconds behind the others.”

  “Anyone leave before the police arrived?”

  “No. Agnes Swanner saw to that.”

  Ravyn raised his eyebrows quizzically.

  “Some of them want to get away, understandable in view of the circumstances, but Agnes made them stay.” He added: “Physically.”

  Ravyn looked to Stark, who shook his head. “Very well, Vicar. Thank you for your cooperation.”

  Stark leaned forward, murmured the date and time, then said: “Interview terminated.” He hit the recorder’s off button as if were the chin of an untalkative yob.

  “Please let me know if I…” Reverend Allen’s voice trailed off.

  “Yes, we shall,” Ravyn said. “That will be all, for now.”

  Dickerson Allen, Vicar of St Barnabas Church in Little Wyvern, stood, hesitated as he looked at the men behind the desk at which only he should sit, then turned. He fled the room before he was moved to say what was on his mind. He would ask the Bishop to pen a sharp letter to the Chief Constable as soon as he sent these people packing.

  “Did you notice how many times he said ‘quite honestly’ and ‘to tell you the truth’?” Stark said, keeping his voice low. “I don’t trust blokes who talk like that.”

  “It doesn’t necessarily mean he’s lying.” Ravyn looked at the closed door. “But he is trying to convince somebody of something, even if it is himself.”

  Chapter 3

  The FOG Moves In

  “Ghosts don’t usually attack, but sometimes they do,” Agnes Swanner said. “An angered ghost might attack a tormentor.”

  “Do you really think so?” Ravyn asked. “They seem such mild creatures, poltergeists excepted of course.”

&nb
sp; “Of course.”

  Agnes eyed the senior officer with surprise and suspicion. She did not trust men whom she could not read. Despite his words, she saw nothing in his eyes or features that revealed what was actually on his mind. Compared to him, his sergeant was an open book, easily read at a glance. She could tell exactly what malicious little thoughts flitted through his thoroughly mundane mind, but Ravyn remained a cypher.

  “Could it have been a demon?” Ravyn asked.

  Agnes fidgeted. “Maybe. I suppose.”

  “A demon summoned or a demon self-manifesting?”

  Again, Agnes regarded him with wariness.

  “I mean,” Ravyn continued, “was Simon Jones a demonologist using this opportunity to summon an entity from Hell? Or was it a chance encounter with an infernal being?” He snapped his fingers. “It could have been a ghoul, interrupted during feeding.”

  Agnes’ wariness was replaced by confusion. “Well, I guess it could have… No, it had to be a ghost. Simon was a ghost hunter.”

  “Yes, he was the Ghosthunter General, wasn’t he?”

  “That’s what he called himself,” Agnes said.

  “What a load of tosh!” Stark said.

  Agnes glared at the young man with a gaze that usually burned away opposition in her critics. He seemed unmoved.

  “I’m surprised you brought an outsider with you, Mr Ravyn,” she said. “Now, I know you’re an outsider too, but by your speech I also know you to be a Hammershire Man.” She paused and cocked her head. “Or are you a Man of Hammershire?”

  “I was born in Abofyl,” he said. “A Hammershire Man.”

  “A pleasant river village,” she remarked.

  “You’ve been there?”

  “A couple of times,” she replied. “Me and Freddie…”

  Stark looked up sharply. “Freddie?”

  “Mr Pettibone…Alfred Pettibone.” She looked at Stark as if he were something found under a damp rock. She turned to Ravyn. “A ghost had been reported in an old mill…”

  “Rodgers’ Mill,” Ravyn said.

  Agnes Swanner smiled expansively. Stark repressed a shudder at the sight. The large woman was heavily made up, face caked with powder. Her colour-slathered lips were a startling crimson. Her eyelids were deep blue, highlighted with sparkles of a lighter blue. He felt as they were being leered at by a demonic clown.

  “Quite an interesting ghost in that mill which had been…”

  “How well did you know Simon Jones?” Ravyn asked.

  Agnes’ smile vanished. She did not tolerate interruptions, but this man carried a warrant card, a symbol of authority requiring submission. Submitting was not in her nature. She burned in silent fury. Her lips tightened. It looked as if someone had tried to slit her throat but had struck too high. Her raccoon eyes narrowed.

  “Not very well,” she admitted. “He was hired by FOG solely for the purpose of conducting the Ghost Tour.”

  “He was not a member of Friends of Ghosts?”

  “No, he was merely an employee,” Agnes said. “The Ghost Tour kicked off Ghost Week, a week-long exhibition of all matters ghostly and supernatural. We want people to know Little Wyvern as the most haunted village in England.”

  “That would certainly lure in outsiders,” Ravyn said.

  “And money,” Agnes added. “Little Wyvern is in a situation common to many villages these days with cottage industries taken to cities or outside Britain entirely, The village is economically depressed. Ghosts are our greatest natural resource, so to speak. By making the outside world aware of them, we will bring in sorely needed money. That’s why all the villagers are sided with us.”

  “Surely not all, Miss Swanner,” Ravyn said. “According to the Ghost Tour itinerary you gave everyone, the tour entered very few actual sites, all of them owned by newcomers. Most were viewed from the exterior only, and many well known haunting sites were bypassed altogether.”

  “We were on a tight schedule.”

  Stark smirked. “More likely the others told you to piss off.”

  “Shut your face!” Agnes snapped.

  “I understand Mr Jones mentioned many of places not actually visited,” Ravyn said. “He spoke of them in detail?”

  “Yes, he did.” Agnes flashed Stark a triumphant sneer. “As I said, we were on a tight schedule, but we still…”

  “How did Mr Jones come to know so much about the ghosts of Little Wyvern?” Ravyn asked. “The village is barely mentioned in books about ghosts, even in folkloric studies. In Mr Jones’ books he does not mention Little Wyvern even once.”

  Stark frowned. He recalled the guv’nor picking up copies of the books from a table, but he had merely fanned the pages, as a man might if he were looking for a scrap of paper used as a bookmark. His lips tightened as he tried to recall everything he had told Ravyn, even as he struggled to keep his attention on the case.

  “FOG provided Simon with information about every ghost, every haunting, every odd occurrence and weird noise heard in the night,” Agnes explained. “We gave him the history of every cottage, every place-name and every shop where even so much as a moan had been heard. Every cursed bridge, haunted grove and pond in which a lovelorn maiden committed suicide. We left out nothing. We even gave him ghost stories that people in Little Wyvern didn’t know anything about.”

  Ravyn smiled. “Really? I can’t imagine anything happening in Little Wyvern, even going back a thousand years, that villagers would not know. We know how it is in a village, don’t we, Miss Swanner? One man’s business is everyone else’s, isn’t it?”

  “There are secrets, Mr Ravyn, and then there are…” She lowered her voice. “…secrets.”

  Ravyn nodded and leaned forward conspiratorially.

  Stark rolled his eyes, but his action went unnoticed by Agnes. She was trapped in a web of her own spinning, caught between holding knowledge none other should ever know and the burning desire to share it with someone else.

  “When Freddie and I, along with Sir Phineas, started FOG…”

  “And Miss Holloway?” Ravyn suggested.

  “And Prudie, though letting her in FOG was more to humour Sir Phineas than anything.” She breathed an exasperated sigh as she thought of that brainless blonde creature. “Anyway, when we began FOG and our campaign to bring prosperity to Little Wyvern, we realised we would need a surfeit of ghosts, obviously.”

  “Obviously.”

  “If ten are good, then twenty are better, and a hundred would be absolutely super.” In her excitement, she almost grabbed Ravyn’s hand, but restrained herself at the last moment. She flushed beneath her makeup. “We embarked on a mission to uncover every single ghost, even those that had, for one reason or another, been known only to family members.”

  Ravyn smiled in encouragement. “Sounds like the four of you left no stone unturned, Miss Swanner.”

  “I should say not.” She nodded fiercely, her eyes bright as she recalled bullying old grans for stories heard in their youths and pushing her way into cottages previously barred by old hermits and misanthropes. “If we would going to put Little Wyvern on the map, all secrets would have to be bared. All had to be brought into the open. Every skeleton had to be pulled from its closet, kicking and screaming, if need be.” She flushed. “So to speak.”

  “I imagine there was some opposition to this wholesale baring of old secrets,” Ravyn suggested.

  “Some,” she admitted. “There’s always some who don’t know what’s best, who put themselves above everyone else’s welfare.”

  “How successful were you, do you think, in routing out all the hidden spooks and spectres?”

  “Extremely,” she said. “There’s always a possibility we missed a few minor manifestations.” She paused. “No, I really don’t think we missed any at all. I was very persistent.”

  Ravyn smiled. “Yes, I’m sure. And you gave the information to Mr Jones?”

  “Yes, all of it.”

  “How long did he have to study
it?”

  “I gave him the material the day before yesterday.”

  “That’s not very long,” Ravyn said. “He learned it all?”

  Agnes nodded. “Despite his many faults, Simon had a very good memory. Some people do, you know.”

  Stark smirked.

  “How did you come to hire Mr Jones?” Ravyn asked.

  “Through advertisements placed in The London Psychic, The Journal of Metaphysical Investigation and Haunted Britain Monthly, as well as a few smaller publications,” she said.

  “How many responded to the listing?”

  “Oh, I don’t recall the exact number, but there were many,” she said. “This was a splendid opportunity.”

  “You interviewed all of them?” Ravyn asked. “Had them come to Little Wyvern or travelled to meet them?”

  “No, not exactly,” she said, voicing her words slowly. “There was no need. Some we dismissed out of hand, as it was apparent from their letters that they were nothing but charlatans.”

  “I bet they were,” Stark muttered.

  “With others, it was a matter or priorities,” she continued. “We needed someone who would put our project first. Some, obviously, saw the changes we wanted to bring to Little Wyvern in terms of their own aggrandisement. We wanted the focus to stay on Little Wyvern, not on someone’s next book or lecture tour.”

  “How many quid did you offer them?” Stark asked.

  Agnes looked at Stark disdainfully. “Money is not everything.”

  “How much?”

  “We could not offer much,” Agnes finally admitted. “Some wanted too much. Even with our patronage, we could not meet the demands of some of the more well known ghost experts.”

  “Patronage, Miss Swanner?” Ravyn asked. “Where exactly does FOG derive its revenues?”

  “I’m not really the best person to ask about that, Mr Ravyn,” she said. “Freddie handles our finances. He’s really very clever with figures. He owns the bookshop in the high street. But I can tell you we are not as well funded as we would like to be. That was why we had to let more qualified guides slip away.”

  “So you got Jones on the cheap?” Stark suggested.

  “He settled for a stipend for the Ghost Tour, with a option for a percentage in future investments,” she said. “Simon was not a full member of FOG, but he shared our vision.”