Village of Ghosts

by Ralph E. Vaughan

  Her eyes watered, but no tears fell. She seemed on the verge of speaking, but her lower lip only trembled.

  “We can go anywhere you want, even back to Wales,” he said. “Your father was keen to gift us a quarter of the farm, and still is.”

  “Oh, Leo!” she cried, laughing. “Not the farm, Leo! Anything but the farm. I spent my whole life escaping that damned farm.”

  Anger flared through him as her laughter kept on. Here he was, trying to sort out their future and she was laughing like a hyena.

  She wiped tears from her eyes, got her laughter under control. “I’m sorry. Please don’t be angry. I had an image of you in a straw hat, walking behind a mule. You know how Dad is.”

  As the ridiculous image took root in his mind, his anger faded Yes, he remembered her father all too well. A smile bent his lips.

  “We can go anywhere,” he said. “Manchester, Liverpool; even back to the City.”

  “And what would you do, Leo Stark?” A stern note entered her voice. “A clerk in a shop? An accountant? Maybe sell winkles and cockles to hungry tourists in Brighton?”

  “Does it really matter what I do as long as we’re together?” he asked. “Listen, I blamed you for most everything that happened in London, for me being sent here. I worried I was seeing it start all over again. I need you…I need my family more than I need this job. If I have to give up one to keep the other, so be it.”

  She took the letter from his hand. “I knew you were a copper when I married you, and you told me it was like no other job in the world. I didn’t understand. I thought you were using it to avoid me.” She looked at the resignation letter. “I see I was wrong.”

  “Maybe, but that doesn’t change anything,” he said. “My job is tearing us apart.”

  She lifted the letter. “If you do this, you’ll come to hate me. Not today or tomorrow, but eventually. And I think I would come to hate you for giving in to my fears and insecurities. I married a strong-willed man, not a quitter.”

  “I want to do what’s right for us.”

  “You fight villains,” she said. “You make the world safer for us.” She touched her tummy. “Safer for all of us. When you come home, I know there is one less monster in the world.”

  “You’ll have regrets if I stay in this job,” he said.

  “From time to time,” she admitted. “But that’s life, isn’t it, no matter what we do. I guess all I really wanted was to know that you loved me more than your job.” She ripped the paper down the centre. “Now I know.”

  He watched the two halves flutter to the floor.

  “Go do what you need to do, Leo,” she said, leaning forward, pressing her lips to his. “When you come home, whenever you come home, I’ll be waiting.”

  Stark opened his eyes and sighed.

  “You all right, Stark?” Ravyn asked. “For a moment, you seemed unfocussed, as if your mind were elsewhere.”

  “Just thinking of something that happened at home, sir.”

  “Not to pry, but is everything okay?”

  “Yes, sir, very much so.”

  “Glad to hear it,” Ravyn said. “But focus on the moment. This will be our only chance, unless he’s already figured it out.”

  “Even if he has, he’ll still show.”

  “How do you figure that?”

  “He won’t be able to help himself,” Stark said. “His nature will not let him. Remember, he’s smarter than all of us put together and has one last thread to snip.”

  “He has one other weakness,” Ravyn said.

  “Sir?”

  “He believes in ghosts.”

  Agnes Swanner entered the saloon bar of the Blithe Spirit. She wore the same purple robe as she had during the séance under the boughs of Hopkins’ Oak. All the tables had been moved aside to accommodate a large round table. The only light in the room was a candle at the table’s centre.

  With Agnes were Michael Albertson, Madeline Wallace, Cat Wheeler, Lena Penworthy, and an older couple, both looking pale and nervous, the parents of Albert Pettibone. When they took their seats at the table, one chair was left open. Ravyn and Stark stood off in the shadows.

  Agnes looked to Ravyn.

  Stark looked at his watch.

  Ravyn’s and Stark’s hands flew to their ears simultaneously. They listened to the tinny voice of the police sergeant outside the Blithe Spirit.

  “After he passes, close in behind,” Ravyn whispered into his tiny lapel microphone. “Ensure none of your men are seen.”

  Ravyn nodded to Agnes.

  The pub’s door creaked open, then closed. Hesitant footfalls. At the entrance to the saloon bar, they paused. A moment later, a shape emerged from the shadows.

  Madeline Wallace gasped.

  “This is blasphemous,” said Reverend Dickerson Allen. “It is impossible to contact the dead. If they have gone to Heaven, they are beyond your reach; if Hell, then you are summoning demons. There are no such thing as ghosts.”

  “I appreciate you coming, Vicar,” Ravyn said.

  “It is under duress,” the vicar said. “I would have declined your ‘invitation,’ but Bishop Price gave me no choice.”

  “Nevertheless, I am glad you are here,” Ravyn said. “When Miss Swanner told me she planned on holding a séance to contact the spirits of the recently murdered, I wanted at least one other rational mind present. Like you, I was not given a choice. My superior, Superintendent Giles Heln, feels the exercise will be helpful. We differ on that point.”

  “I see,” Reverend Allen said, stepping farther into the room. “We all have our masters. When they order, we can do naught but obey. But I still want it noted by all…” He let his scornful gaze sweep over those at the table “…I am here under protest.”

  “Please be seated, Vicar,” Ravyn said. “The sooner we start, the sooner we can finish and get back to work.”

  “Very well.” The vicar took the empty chair between Madeline Wallace, who cringed from him, and Agnes Swanner, who afforded him the briefest of glances.

  “Please place your hands on the tabletop,” Agnes said. “We are seekers after knowledge. After wisdom.” She paused. “After truth. We seek justice for those so cruelly cut down. Come to us, spirits. Cross the Great Barrier and make your way toward the light so that we may speak to you. Come and manifest yourselves amongst us, o spirits of the departed. Come to us, Freddie.”

  Pettibone’s mother smothered a small sob while his father sat still and straight.

  “Come to us, Sir Phineas, Prudie, and Margaret Banberry.”

  Cat Wheeler’s hands formed into fists. She glanced at Ravyn, then forced her hands flat on the table.

  “Come to us, Simon Jones.”

  Madeline trembled and tears streamed down her cheeks, but she refused to make a sound.

  “Come amongst us, Matthew Nevis.”

  Ravyn watched the vicar closely. Except for a slight widening of the eyes, he saw no response at all.

  “Come to us, all you spirits, and cry murder!”

  The candle dimmed and fluttered. They heard the whisper of a faint breeze in the closed bar. The temperature around the table plummeted. Their breaths became frosty.

  “A spirit has come amongst us,” Agnes announced. “Spirit, can you make yourself known to us?”

  Something rapped hard against the table. They felt the vibration through their palms but saw nothing. Several pulled their hands back, including the vicar, who appeared as if he had pressed his hand against a hot-plate.

  “Please place your hands upon the table, palms down,” Agnes said. “We must maintain the connection. Travelling from the House of Dust and Darkness to the land of the living is difficult. We must help them. Other spirits are with us, but they are not strong enough to approach the table.”

  Five faintly luminescent forms appeared around the table. They kept their distance, almost lost in shadows, shimmering. Wavering, they appeared to approach and retreat from the table, as if trying to join them, bu
t were held at bay by some unseen barrier.

  “Come to us, o spirit,” Agnes intoned. “Make yourself known that we may speak to you.”

  The candle, which had almost guttered to extinction, flared to sudden life. The flame leaped nearly a foot in the air. Within the swirling fire a shape took form, that of a man’s face.

  “Gather strength from us, o spirit,” Agnes said. “Come that you may tell of your last hours on Earth.”

  “I am…” The voice was hollow and soft. It seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere. “I am…here.”

  “Tell us, spirit, what was your earthly name.”

  “When I walked among men, I was known as…”

  “Tell us, spirit,” Agnes said. “This is a time for Truth.”

  “I was called Matthew Nevis,” the voice said, waxing stronger. “I walked paths of wickedness and darkness.”

  “You were murdered?”

  “Yes.” The single word was freighted with unbearable sadness and pain. “I sought riches, but found death.”

  “Why were you killed?”

  “Because I was a fool.”

  “Can you tell us who killed you?”

  “A man who was once my friend,” replied the spirit of Matthew Nevis. “He betrayed me. He tried to kill me before, but I escaped. It was but a temporary reprieve, for ten years later he murdered me and banished me to the outer darkness, where there is wailing and gnashing of teeth.”

  “But you have come back,” Agnes said.

  “I have come back.”

  “Have you returned to seek justice?”

  “No.”

  One by one, the glowing shapes ranged in the shadows around the table winked out of existence. It was as if fleeing the advent of some terrible doom. A whoosh of wind extinguished the candle. The darkness lasted less than a second as a glowing apparition leaped into being in the space above the table.

  “I have come for vengeance!” the spirit cried. “Freed from Hell, I am a ghost! I shall torment the man who took my life before its time. If I am sent back, I shall drag him to Hell with me.”

  The vicar’s disdain for the proceedings dropped away. Terror etched his face. His jaw was distended, his eyes wide and bulging. Every vein and muscle in his neck popped out, as if on the verge of exploding through his skin. Everyone seated at the table stared at him, but he saw only the figure surging toward him.

  “In death I found neither peace nor redemption, but I did find truth,” the spirit said, its shimmering form mere inches from the vicar’s face. “I knew you as Lester Post, but I now know you by another name, your true name—Victor Boil, spawn of the Warlock.”

  Instantly the five other spirits popped into being. They were still vague and amorphous, but they now had faces. The victims of Victor Boil stared accusingly at the vicar. Those seated at the table gasped, screamed or wept.

  Reverend Allen, who had been born Victor Boil, pushed away from the table. His chair went clattering behind him. So violently did he shove the table that it upset the delicate mechanisms within. The raging spirit above the table and the accusing spirits arrayed around it suddenly vanished, leaving the room in total darkness.

  Instantly, Ravyn and Stark switched on their torches, fixing Victor Boil in their beams. Agnes was on her feet, Boil standing behind her, a knife at her throat.

  “Stay where you are, Chief Inspector,” Boil warned. “You too, Sergeant Stark. And don’t think of calling in any help,” he said as Ravyn started to reach for the microphone in his lapel. “Did you think I did not see your constables on the way in?”

  “Let her go, Boil,” Ravyn said. “If you saw the constables, you know some are part of armed response.”

  Boil glanced at his knife. “Seems I brought a knife to a gun fight, as the man said. But—oh, look!—I also brought a hostage.”

  “I thought breaking necks was more your forte.”

  “Much more satisfying,” Boil said, “but I’m a practical man.”

  “A practical man who believes in ghosts?” Stark asked.

  Boil glanced at the table. “I admit you had me going for a bit. I should have known it was a trick.” He pressed the knife harder to his captive’s throat, drawing a trickle of blood. “Agnes here is as psychic as a rock, just a dull clod, like she was as a child. She was half my age, but was just as big, twice as stupid. I often thought of twisting that ham hock neck of hers, but I was only eight, and she was no puppy. Now, Freddie, I went to his room many times, but it never worked out. And then…well, you know by now.”

  “Yes, you murdered your parents,” Ravyn said.

  “My parents,” he sneered. “Fools! They were ashamed of the family name, were even talking about leaving Hammershire and changing our names. They didn’t think I knew their plans, but, then, everyone underestimates a child. I couldn’t let them take me away from the Warlock.”

  “And yet you left,” Ravyn said. “Adult cunning and malice, but a child’s mind. You thought no one would realise what you did.”

  “When they held me, talked about me, I knew then I had to run, but I also knew I would be back,” Boil said. “Back to my ancestors, back to the seat of our power…which none of the dog-collars ever found out, especially the last prattling fool.”

  Ravyn started around one side, Stark the other.

  “Stay where you are!”

  The detectives halted, but kept their torches trained on Boil. Eventually, when no orders were received, the armed response force leader would realise what had happened, would order his men in. It was a certainty they would take Boil, but at what cost?

  “In addition to neck breaking, you’re adept at heart taking,” Ravyn said. “Is that the knife you cut Freddie open with?”

  As Boil started to reply, he glanced at the knife and lifted the blade from Agnes’ throat. Only a fraction of an inch, but as soon as Agnes felt a release of pressure, she drove her elbow back as hard as she could, powered as much by hatred as grief for a lost love.

  Unable to breathe, Boil staggered back, blindly slashing the air before him. Agnes would have rushed into that flying blade but for Stark, who grabbed her and flung her back.

  “Albertson, get the lights on,” Ravyn said. At the same time, he spoke into his lapel microphone: “Go, go, go!”

  The publican, stunned, was slow to react. By the time he flew behind the bar and threw the main switch, Boil had recovered, menacing anyone who tried to advance on him. The man everyone in Little Wyvern had known as the Vicar of St Barnabas rushed out the back as the main door caved in. Gunfire erupted from the car park behind the pub.

  Ravyn and Stark found an armed police officer on his back, the hilt of a knife sticking out of his shoulder, just above the edge of his Kevlar stab vest. He still had his own weapon clutched tightly. Ravyn and Stark ran into the night.

  “Man injured, car park behind pub,” Ravyn reported. “Pursuing suspect. All units converge on village church.”

  “The church is no escape,” Stark said, panting as he struggled to match Ravyn’s swift stride. “He’ll be trapped.”

  “He is fleeing to his family’s old seat of power,” Ravyn said.

  “What? The church?” They ran over the rise of the bridge and into sight of St Barnabas’ spire. “Do you think he has weapons stored there? Is this going to be a standoff?”

  “In his heart, Boil believes only in spiritual power,” Ravyn said. “It’s why he took the hearts, just as the Warlock did.”

  They ran through the licht gate which was swinging on its hinges. The heard the church door open, then bang closed.

  “The armed response force should be right behind us, sir.”

  “His knife is back there,” Ravyn said. “We have to stop him.”

  Knife or not, Stark would rather have waited for the arrival of the armed response team. As far as they knew, he might have more weapons hidden within. When Ravyn rushed inside, however, Stark was on his heels.

  The interior of the church was awash with faint
light. The full moon that had witnessed Nevis’ murder in Pooks Wood was nearly a crescent. Its light flowed through the stained glass windows. They heard a door bang beside the altar.

  “He’s gone below,” Ravyn said.

  Stark shook his head. “That makes no sense. There’s no way out. He’s trapped himself.”

  When the detective reached the door, it was locked from the inside. Stark, who thought to wait out Boil, was surprised when the guv’nor picked up the end of a pew. Sighing, Stark picked up the other. Three rushes, and they were through.

  Their torches led them down a flight of curving stone stairs. A light switch on the wall illuminated a single bulb in the darkness below them. They heard the sound of shattering glass and the light went out.

  “Come out of there, Boil,” Ravyn called down.

  “Thee hast no power over me,” a voice said from below. It sounded very much like Boil’s, but was subtly different. “Mine infernal lord hast given me lease to do as I wilt.”

  “To whom am I speaking?” Ravyn asked.

  “I am Hezekiah Boil, that men call Warlock.”

  “Whoever you think you are, you better come out now,” Stark shouted. “If I have to come down there to get you, I’m going to kick your arse to Hell and back.”

  “Witless dolt!” Boil snarled. “Thee art no…”

  From the darkness below came a sudden cry. It was filled with pain and terror.

  “Boil!”

  “No, no, get thee back!” Boil screamed. “Get thee…I cannot be touched by man or… No! Back! No!”

  Boil uttered a terrifying final scream. Stark felt his heart flutter at the sound. It was a cry he would never forget, would never escape, and yet any attempt to describe it would ever be futile.

  Ravyn and Stark clattered down the stairs. Behind them, they heard the others storm into the church.

  The subterranean realm entered by Ravyn and Stark made the church above seem a product of only yesterday. The glare from their torches revealed stone ribbing of earlier centuries and dressed stones of even greater antiquity. A tiny portion of the cellar near the stairs had been converted to storage, but the yawning blackness stretching away from the stairway had been left untouched, mostly unsuspected by generations of worshipers kneeling above.