Lazar

by Lawrence Heath

  Jan spread her hands as wide as she could and swept them over the exterior of the unseen building until she came up against a buttress. Guided by her probing fingers, Jan soon negotiated this obstacle, turning through three-quarters of a circle as she did so. She began feeling her way along the north wall of the nave.

  What was that? Something curved and carved was standing proud of the wall just above her head. Her fingers investigated further. Was it the stone sill of a window? She reached up as far as she could. Yes! She could feel the glass smooth beneath her fingers. Was it lead-paned? She stretched out to her right.

  Suddenly the ground collapsed beneath her feet. Immediately her fingers latched on to the sill and hung on in desperation, frantically clinging to the narrow strip of masonry as her legs dangled helplessly in the air. She looked down. There was nothing beneath her feet – only a heart-stopping, panoramic view of the shingle beach thirty metres below. She looked to the left. The scars in the soil, at the edge of the cliff, marked where she had lost her footing. What could she do? She was hanging on for dear life by her fingertips from a windowsill she couldn’t see on the side of an invisible building. Just how solid was this illusory medieval church? How long could it bear her weight? What would happen if it vanished?

  “For God’s sake, Hal,” her thoughts screamed out, “please, please don’t turn your damned computer off.”

  Jan could feel herself beginning to panic. She took several deep breaths, then began to concentrate on trying to gain a foothold. If only she could see the wall. She moved her left leg slowly, scraping the inside of her shoe along the surface. Yes! There was something jutting out, protruding from the masonry. She dug her toe in. She slowly, slowly raised her other foot until it also found the ledge.

  Hardly daring to breath, she pulled herself up – inch by tortuous inch – until she felt confident enough to let go with her right hand and try to move toward the buttress and firm ground. Her right foot slipped. Her left hand failed. Her heart stopped. In an instant she was falling like a stone.

  But not very far.

  Almost within the same instant she found herself standing only centimetres below where she had fallen. She looked down. There was still nothing there. The view was still as panoramic. And although her heart had momentarily stopped, it was now pounding away again, so hard that she could hear it.

  Jan knelt down and placed her hands right next to where her feet were firmly planted in thin air. Blades of grass caressed her fingers. Jan let herself roll backward until she was lying at full stretch in the medieval cemetery. She stared up at the sky. Tears rolled softly down her cheeks as she began to laugh out loud. How could she have been so stupid. If the phantom church had been solid enough to hang from, why had she not realised that the ground on which it had once stood would be strong enough to take her weight? But why had she fallen in the first place? She turned over and looked at the edge of the cliff. Of course – the topsoil had slowly built up over the centuries until the present ground level was nearly thirty centimetres above that of the long lost medieval churchyard.

  Jan sat up and looked out over the sea toward the horizon. Just how far could she go? Would she be able to follow the entire route of her nightmare, right down to the medieval shoreline? She got to her feet and pulled the map from her back pocket. As she did so something heavy slipped out with it, plummeting immediately like a stone. Tumbling with alarming speed and smacking hard into the cliff face it span off in a jagged arc, its shattered screen in splinters, sparkling in the sun.

  “Oh no, my phone!” Jan cried involuntarily.

  Her cry was answered by a piercing scream. She shot a glance toward the beach below. A family was out walking. The children were pointing up at her and shouting to their parents.

  Jan turned, ran and hurled herself headlong on to the strip of land on which the church tower stood. She rolled over and over until she was well clear of the cliff edge, and lay there without moving until the voices far below had faded away.

  She would have to leave her expedition to the waterfront until after dark.

  “Walked in the air?” Hal’s cry of amazement was tinged with the laughter of disbelief. “You mean you actually walked in the air?” He repeated his exclamation very slowly, but this time without any trace of laughter.

  “Did you get a photo?”

  “You don’t believe me, do you?” Jan glared at her cousin.

  “A photo would help…”

  “Well, I took several photographs as it happens,” Jan retorted, then she faltered. “But I dropped my phone when I was standing at the top of the cliff. It’s probably smashed to pieces somewhere on the beach.”

  “You’re lucky it was only your phone,” Hal smiled. “What would my mother have said if you’d fallen off the cliff as well?”

  “It’s not funny, Hal,” Jan shouted. “I really thought I was going to fall when the cliff edge gave way and I was hanging there by my fingers. I was terrified.”

  “I’m sorry,” Hal apologised. He stared into the middle distance and then back at Jan. She was still glaring hard at him. “It’s just that I’m still having trouble even getting my head around that trick you did with the monastery wall,” he attempted to explain.

  “It was not a trick.”

  “No, sorry, I didn’t mean ‘trick’ as such, not literally. I meant…”

  “In any case,” Jan interrupted her cousin’s fumbling apology, “if I’d come back and told you that I’d seen a phantom building that I couldn’t touch you wouldn’t have had a problem getting your head round that. What’s so difficult about it being the other way round?”

  “Actually,” Hal was back on the attack, “I would have had a problem with a phantom building, seeing as I don’t believe in ghosts. But I take your point – ghosts have a reputation for being immaterial.

  “On the other hand…” he continued. Jan could see the light of theorising shining in his eyes. “I’ve seen photos of people at seances who are supposed to be levitating themselves – hovering in the air. Perhaps the ‘Margaret virus’ has reawakened some primitive power of levitation, deep down in your brain, and mapped it on to the image of Old Wickwich that it’s created on my PC.”

  Jan stared incredulously at her cousin.

  “I really don’t understand you, Hal. You just can’t accept that something’s happened unless you’ve come up with a theory to explain how it works. You can’t get your head round anything unless you’ve worked out the mechanics.”

  “Well I don’t understand you,” Hal retorted defensively. “How can anyone explain anything unless they know how it’s happened?”

  “Oh Hal!” Jan threw her hands up in the air in exasperation. “‘How’ only describes what’s happening. It’s ‘why’ that explains the reason something happens – what’s caused it to take place. That’s what’s important. Especially now – now that we know why all this is happening to us.”

  “We do?” Hal looked perplexed.

  “Yes, we do. The reason why I’m being haunted is so that I can walk down to the waterfront and find out what happened to Margaret in 1286.”

  “And then?”

  “Then, Hal, I’ll know why Margaret has haunted Wickwich for the past seven hundred years.” It was now Jan’s turn to theorise. “When you read about ghosts in books…”

  “I don’t read about ghosts in books,” Hal interrupted. Jan ignored him.

  “…they’re nearly always the spirits of dead people who can’t rest because they died before something important was completed or some secret was passed on. I’ve been chosen by Margaret to find out what her ‘something’ is, and to do whatever needs to be done to put it right.”

  “What if this ‘something’ – presumably whatever this thing was in the sea – turns out to be dangerous?” Hal looked hard at his cousin. “Don’t ghosts came back to haunt people because of the horrendous way they died.”

  “But it can’t affect me … can it?” Jan asked uncertainly, as if se
eking confirmation of her statement. “It happened centuries ago.”

  “It seems to be able to affect my computer,” Hal pointed out, “and your brain.”

  “Yes, but we have total control over your computer don’t we?” This time Jan’s question was the affirmation of a fact. “All you have to do is turn your computer off and any kind of physical manifestation immediately disappears.”

  Hal sat back in his chair and moved the tips of his forefingers to his lips.

  “And when do you propose to go in search of this ‘something’?” he asked after a moment’s reflection.

  “Tonight.”

  “Tonight? You must be mad.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, I mean, at night … Isn’t that just a little bit spooky?”

  “I thought you didn’t believe in ghosts?”

  “I don’t. But I don’t believe in going looking for trouble either.”

  “But where’s the ‘trouble’? If you’re here, sitting at the computer, monitoring my whereabouts by watching my ring’s icon on the screen, then….”

  “Hello, you two.” Hal’s father breezed into the room. “What are you talking about so seriously, then?”

  “Eh? Oh,” Jan quickly improvised, “we’re discussing the three-dimensional model of Old Wickwich that Hal’s created on his computer.”

  “Ah, yes. You mentioned something about that the other morning. Sounds interesting. May I have a look?”

  Hal’s father strode across the bedroom and stopped and stared down over his son’s shoulder toward the screen. It was displaying the exterior of the chapel in St James’ churchyard.

  “Aha! The Lazar,” he enthused.

  “Laser?” Jan repeated in surprise. “That’s what Margaret said.”

  “Who’s Margaret?” enquired Hal’s father without turning from the screen. “Is she your ‘ghost’?”

  “Yes, something like that. She got very agitated about the laser when she saw Hal’s computer. I thought she was talking about the printer.”

  “No, no,” Hal’s father smiled and turned toward his niece. “Not laser, lazar – l-a-z-a-r. That chapel was once part of Wickwich’s medieval Lazar hospital.”

  “What’s a Lazar hospital?” asked Hal as he zoomed in on the image on the screen as though searching for an answer to his question.

  “Most towns had a Lazar hospital in the Middle Ages,” his father explained, “although they weren’t hospitals as you and I would understand the word. They were more like leper colonies; places where lepers lived and died in isolation, away from the centres of population. That’s why Lazars are always found outside the walls of medieval cities.”

  He stopped suddenly, thrown off his stride by the sight of both children staring at him open-mouthed. Their silence suggested that further clarification was required.

  “They were called Lazars after…”

  “Lazarus,” Hal and Jan completed his sentence in unison.

  “Yes, that’s right. So you knew about Lazars all the time.”

  “Not really,” Jan replied. “It was just that Jill mentioned Lazarus to us this morning. He was the leper in the Bible.”

  “That’s right. Lepers were a common sight in medieval England, and the populace had an almost pathological fear of leprosy.”

  “What is leprosy, exactly?” Jan asked, thoughtfully.

  “Ah, I’m not a medical expert, but I believe it’s a virus or bacillus or something that causes severe mutilation of the extremities like toes and fingers, even the face – the lips and ears and nose.”

  Jan zipped up her jacket and picked up a torch, then opened the door to her room without making a sound. She crept down the stairs toward Hal’s room as quietly as she could. His door was slightly ajar. She tiptoed in.

  “So you’re going through with it, then?” he asked, without taking his eyes off the map of Old Wickwich his computer screen.

  “Of course. I reckon it’s tonight or never,” Jan whispered.

  Suddenly Hal turned and looked straight into her eyes.

  “I suppose there’s no way I can stop you, is there?” he said with a mixture of entreaty and resignation.

  “Short of telling on me to your Mum and Dad, no,” Jan replied. “And I know you wouldn’t do that.”

  “Yeah, but if you got hurt or anything I’d get it in the neck for not telling them.”

  “Oh, I see. So that’s what’s bothering you.”

  “No.” Hal sounded slightly hurt at Jan’s suggestion. “No, I’m worried about you. I’m not happy about your going there alone.”

  “Ah, thank you,” Jan responded with the sarcasm born of embarrassment. “But there’s no one else who can come with me. You certainly can’t. There’s your ankle for a start, and – more importantly – I need you here to keep an eye on your computer and make sure that no one turns it off. And in any case, what on earth is there to worry about anyway?”

  “Well,” Hal began, “if I understood you correctly earlier on, you’re going out with the intention of walking off a cliff in the…”

  He was interrupted by a distant roll of thunder.

  “And listen to that,” he added. “It’s been getting closer all evening. You’ll be looking for a phantom city in the middle of a thunderstorm.”

  “I know. Corny, eh?” Jan smiled. “Look, the worst thing that can happen to me is that I get very, very wet.”

  “I’m not so sure.” Hal frowned. “From what Dad was saying, I reckon Margaret had leprosy.”

  “Yes, so do I,” Jan agreed, “but she certainly didn’t have it the day before the storm – she didn’t have a mark on her face when I saw her at the monastery.”

  “So she must have caught it after that,” Hal said thoughtfully. “Which means she must have survived the storm.”

  A frown of puzzlement creased his brow.

  “So what on earth is she expecting you to do? It’s not as though you can take a cure or some medicine back in time with you, can you?”

  “No. I wouldn’t know what to take anyway,” Jan began to answer Hal’s questions, “but perhaps I can prevent her from catching it in the first place.”

  “How? And why you?”

  “I don’t know.” Jan sounded despondent. “Perhaps she caught it from whatever it was that was in the sea.”

  “What?” Hal retorted sceptically. “And she wants you to go there tonight and catch it instead of her?”

  For the first time since she had entered her cousin’s room Jan looked unsure of herself. She bit her lip, then shook her head. Finally, she let out a quiet laugh that failed to sound light-hearted.

  “No, don’t be stupid,” she said, by way of reassurance – presumably for Hal. “I wouldn’t catch leprosy. I can’t. There’s no such thing as a phantom germ. In any case, if things look bad you can always turn off your computer.”

  “But how will I know if things look bad? All I can tell from your icon on the screen is where you are, not the situation that you’re in.”

  “Don’t worry,” Jan said soothingly, her confidence returning. “If things get really bad I can always take my ring off – that’ll also break the spell.”

  “Will it? I didn’t know that.” Hal’s surprise turned to suspicion. “Are you sure?”

  “Well, I’m not absolutely certain. I haven’t actually tried it out, but I’m sure that that’s the case.”

  “Let’s give it a go.” Hal turned to face his computer and quickly scrolled down the map until his bedroom and Jan’s icon were at the centre. As he did so Jan slipped Margaret’s ring off her finger. Her icon vanished from the screen. Hal zoomed out. The entire map of medieval Wickwich had disappeared.

  Jan slipped the ring back on again. The map was instantly restored. Hal zoomed in. There was Jan’s icon in the centre of the screen.

  “You were right,” Hal exclaimed.

  “Shhhhh!” Jan hissed, “you’ll wake your parents up.”

  “Sorry,” whispered Hal, then frowned.
“Although that proves that you can clear the images off my screen it doesn’t follow that you can make the Wickwich you can touch out there,” he pointed in the general direction of the window, “disappear as well. You may not have broken that spell.”

  “Hmmm, maybe.” Jan felt her confidence waver once more. “But I can try it again when I’m outside and see whether my sense of touch vanishes when I take off the ring.”

  “Make sure do, at the chapel,” Hal insisted, “before you go any further with this stupid expedition.”

  The sky was alight for an instant. In a flash, all was darkness again. Jan counted the seconds. When she reached seventeen the clouds drummed in the distance, somewhere out over the sea.

  Hal was right. She was mad. This was stupid – setting out in a storm to rendezvous with a supernatural city at midnight. She could be fast asleep, in bed, not out here stumbling down a narrow lane by torchlight.

  But would being in bed have been any better, she asked herself. On the previous two nights, to be fast asleep was to rendezvous with the ghost of Old Wickwich. She was convinced that the nightmare would haunt her forever if she didn’t exorcise it tonight. That was why she was doing this, wasn’t it?

  Wasn’t it?

  Jan shivered as she realised that she could not answer her own question. A sudden breeze disturbed the heavy boughs above her head. Dark currents rippled through their shoals of leaves. Jan looked up, just as she walked out from beneath the canopy of trees. The sky was wide above her.

  Sheet lightning startled the horizon again. Fifteen seconds later, thunder clapped.

  Hal sat in front of his computer, oblivious to the familiar drone of its disk drive and the distant rumble of the summer storm. He stared hard at the screen. Jan’s icon had just reached the Lazar.