Gethsemane Hall

by David Annandale

  “What do you mean?”

  “Are you worried about soiling his life’s work?”

  “For the Agency? Not likely.”

  “That’s not what I meant. I think we both know the Agency was just a job for him.”

  Memories of his ghost obsessions in college. Her frustrations that a man so smart could be goddamn gullible. She had never understood why he’d needed so badly to believe. “Go on,” she said.

  “What did you think about his research?”

  “It was nonsense.”

  “You’re a skeptic.”

  “I’m a magician. You want ghosts, I’ll give you ghosts. I’ll give you the whole rotten parapsychological menu. It isn’t hard. You going to tell me what you want?”

  “I’m trying to clear up what happened to Pete.”

  Sturghill snorted. “Ohhhhh,” she said with sarcastic revelation, “you want the truth.”

  “If it does what I need,” Meacham said, and her cynical honesty disarmed Sturghill. “I’m more interested in shutting down publicity. Ghosts are really good attention-getters. Debunked ghosts, not so much.”

  “Why should I agree to be your debunker? There are plenty of other magicians around.”

  “I thought you might want to know how he really died.”

  “He killed himself. He snapped, probably under the weight of too much bullshit. Spiritual lies or your kind, I don’t know, and I don’t care. Same difference.”

  “Are you sure?”

  Sturghill hesitated. “I’m under contract here,” she said and realized she was setting the terms of her surrender.

  “Don’t worry about it,” Meacham said, and Sturghill found she did believe in the woman’s confidence.

  In the dream, he was back at St. Rose’s Church, going through the funeral again. He knew he was dreaming because he felt the pain of repetition, sensed the sadism of a force that would make him experience ritualized loss once again. Knowing he was dreaming didn’t diminish the pain. The anguish pressed him down, a granite weight, as he tried to stand for the hymn. The injustice of the re-enactment was colossal and could only be for the benefit of a cruel deity’s amusement. Something was laughing at him. He looked up. Standing above the altar was a large wooden crucifix, its Christ bigger than life. The Christ was laughing at him. Now he was looking at the face in close-up, was staring into its wide mouth, could see where the red paint of its throat had chipped, saw lips peeled back from tree-ringed teeth. He couldn’t see Christ’s eyes. He couldn’t see anything but the laugh, the maw of red disappearing to black. The laugh itself was looking at him, the mouth so contorted with mirth that the very expression had become sentient. He tried to yell back at it, to give back his hatred, but the laugh was too huge, too strong, visible even when he closed his eyes. The laugh grew from howl to tsunami roar. Its register climbed hysteria’s ladder from exultation to frenzy, and finally it was the scream of the heart of the universe.

  Gray woke up. His room was pitch dark, the gloom a velvet blindfold on his eyes. Something was wrong. The space felt too big. His bed was an isolated island, the walls too far away. He wasn’t where he should be, but the alien room also felt familiar. He pulled his arms out from under the sheets. Cotton rubbed against his skin, confirming that he was awake, but the room did not click back to itself.

  He placed his arms at his sides. He splayed his hands against the bedspread and froze. His palms slicked. He shouldn’t be touching a bedspread. His own bed had a comforter, not this. He moved his fingers, trying to chivvy his imagination out of its delusion. Instead, he traced contours of terrycloth material. He became aware of the musty smell of age. His throat dried. He knew where he was. As a child, on those rare occasions when he and his parents had gone to visit Aunt Gloria, he had stayed in this room in Gethsemane Hall. It had been decades since he had last slept there, but his body remembered the touch of the bed, the aloof distance of the walls. I am not here, he thought. He swallowed, hurting his throat, and the precision of pain shot down any last hope that he was still dreaming. He whispered, “No.” His voice was hoarse, small in the big dark.

  He sat up, strained his eyes, could still see nothing. A smothering claustrophobia mixed with his terror. He turned to his left. In his room at the Hall, there had been an oak bedside table here, with a table lamp. In the London flat, there was no table. Instead, the head of the bed had shelves. He reached above his head and didn’t find the shelves. He touched oak instead, and when he moved his hand to the left, he touched one of the posters that belonged to the Hall’s bed. He reached further, and there was the bedside table. And there was the brass of the lamp.

  He had been holding his breath, and he let it out now in a moan. He moved his hand up the lamp, and his fingers found the switch. He hesitated, terrified that sight would be the final nail in reality’s coffin. He waited three more breaths, giving sanity one last chance to reassert itself. Then he turned the switch.

  Light. He was in his London bedroom, and its dimensions were generous for the city, but far from cavernous. A comforter covered the bed. There was no bedside table. Gray’s heart downshifted from arrhythmia. Then he realized that the light that was on was the ceiling light. Its switch was on the wall, on the other side of the room from the bed.

  They woke up.

  In Roseminster, Anna Pertwee and Edgar Corderman were in separate rooms at the Nelson. Pertwee was gasping when she came to. The nightmare left no memory, but it did leave a trace: the sensation of being dragged down into a whirlpool. Corderman woke himself up with his whimpering. He didn’t know why.

  In London, Louise Meacham snapped her eyes open and leaped out of bed. She turned on the light and saw that there was no one in her room. This did not comfort her.

  Patrick Hudson was yanked out of sleep by a stiletto-bladed sense of sudden, irrevocable loss.

  In Paris, Kristine Sturghill’s heart was giving the good pound. She had dreamed of the show, and this time, Tibbert’s legs had fallen off. She wasn’t ditching the gig any too soon. England called to her.

  Ripples reached as far as Washington. Jim Korda stirred, uneasy, but went back to sleep.

  James Crawford didn’t wake up, because he wasn’t asleep. He was pulling an all-nighter, finished up a damned article because he’d let the damned submission deadline creep up on him like a damned fool again. He was putting the references together when a premonition passed over him like an oil slick. He stopped typing, startled. The slick receded, and he went back to work, just that little bit rattled. Just a little.

  Gray didn’t go back to sleep. The mere thought was ice in his gut. He got up and moved through the flat, turning on all the lights. Then he sat in the living room, TV turned on to a broadcast of Sink the Bismarck. He waited for day, and for the first time since receiving the news of his family’s death, his dominant emotion wasn’t grief. It was fear, but, he thought, and almost smiled, a change was as good as a rest. Bit by bit, he came to believe that. He felt the first hint of relief.

  He settled more comfortably into his chair. On the screen, Kenneth More was looking stern and enforcing discipline in the situation room. Gray thought about his hallucination. He put the experience down to that, dismissing the inconsistencies as sleep confusion. As the immediacy of the terror passed, he tasted something like nostalgia. As a child, he had never enjoyed the pilgrimages to see Aunt Gloria. But they were now so far on the other side of the barrier of his bereavement that the memories had an appealing glow. They had a pull. So did the Hall. The room he had thought he was in beckoned, untainted by adult memories. Adams’s death didn’t seem like a deterrent any longer, just an irritation.

  The dream bothered him more. The laughter was what did it. Reason told him the vision was his own subconscious at work. Emotion said otherwise. Emotion moved him to anger. And when a course of action presented itself, when he saw a petty but satisfying bit of retaliation, he smiled. He was so out of practice with the gesture that he didn’t know, at first, what he was doi
ng.

  Everything was part of God’s good plan. The trick was to remember that. Some days, the trick was harder than others. Hudson had sensed this was going to be one of those days the moment he’d woken during the night. His intuition was handed bad karma confirmation when he reached the office. Deborah Culberth, who ran admin for Ties of Hope, was wearing a kicked-puppy face when he walked in. Culberth was the queen of indomitable. The hit had to be a big one to rock her back on her heels.

  “I’m sure I don’t want to know,” Hudson said as he sat down. Ties of Hope’s new digs were temporary, and they felt it. The office was a single open room, devoid of furniture except for tables, chairs, and couple of phones. The space was a ridiculously expensive rental in Croydon, but it was the best they could do on short notice until they found something more permanent back in London. Its windows looked out onto a rail line and a construction yard big with industrial noise.

  “I was just talking to Richard,” said Culberth.

  Now he was sure he didn’t want to know. “And?”

  “He’s pulling his funding.”

  Hudson didn’t answer right away. He was listening to a dream die. The sound was disappointingly banal: no clap of thunder, no ominous chord, not even a click, just the uncaring background growl of the machine grinding and grinding beyond the office window. A train rattled by, and the world moved on. Hudson tried to imagine a way of picking up the pieces of the dream. Couldn’t be done. Gray was the financial foundation of Ties of Hope, and he’d just triggered a demolition charge. “Did he say why?” Hudson asked.

  “He said he’s shifting everything to Oxfam.”

  So he wasn’t giving up on humanitarian efforts. Hudson saw some glowing embers of hope amid the ash. “Was he calling from home?”

  “I think he was on his mobile.”

  Hudson picked up the phone and punched in the number.

  Two rings, then Gray answered. “Hello, Patrick,” he said. There was a lightness to his tone that surprised Hudson. He sounded almost cheerful, but the sun in his voice was still overlaid by steely bitterness. Hudson could hear a background static murmur of motorway traffic. He pictured Gray in his car, speeding into the distance, pulling further and further away from him. The image hit him with a sense of final loss and of efforts too little and too late.

  “Why, Richard?” Too many questions, so he asked them all at once.

  “Revenge.”

  “Against whom?”

  “God, I suppose.” Harshness in his voice. He wasn’t supposing at all.

  “Don’t. You mustn’t.”

  “Why not? The money’s still doing its work. What’s the problem? Too attached to your hobby horse?”

  Hudson flinched at the truth, pushed it away. There were greater truths at issue. “That’s unfair and unworthy of you.”

  “I’m not feeling very fair these days, for some reason.”

  “Please don’t turn away from God. Now, more than ever, you need —”

  “Haven’t we already had this conversation? I think we have. Unless you have anything new to add?”

  Hudson fumbled in the pause. Gray’s hostility was so out of character, it was derailing his train of thought.

  “I didn’t think so,” Gray continued.

  “Please ...” Hudson heard himself plead, and he knew he had lost.

  “I’m sorry,” Gray said, and his tone became gentler. It bothered Hudson even more to hear his friend speaking now not out of anger, but in the firmness of mature thought. “I know I’m hurting your life’s work.” Another pause, as if he were struggling with a decision. “I’ll do my best to find a replacement sponsor for you.”

  “Then why —”

  “Because none of my money is going to help spread faith. And tapping a substitute is the last bit of help your god is going to have from me.” He was still speaking calmly. “Anyway, if the money’s there, what do you care?”

  “That’s not fair.”

  “No, you’re right. Apologies again. But why does my faith matter so much? It doesn’t affect yours.” Long pause, during which Hudson couldn’t answer. “Does it?”

  “Of course it doesn’t.” His throat was thick with lies.

  “Ciao, Patrick.” Gray rang off.

  Hudson stood with the phone to his ear, listening to nothing. He made himself replace the receiver in its cradle, made himself look around the room, made himself concentrate. Faces looking at him, expectant, nervous. “Don’t worry,” he told them. “He’ll help us find someone else.”

  “And if he can’t?” Culberth asked.

  “He will.” He picked up his coat and unopened briefcase.

  “Where are you going?”

  “To make sure,” he said.

  An hour later he was on the train to Roseminster, rushing to preserve his faith.

  chapter six

  the meet cute

  James Crawford’s office was the home of a busy man. The books on the shelves were in alphabetical order, each in its place. But the flat surfaces were stacked high with papers. Toppling piles merged in a cacophony of unfinished business crying for attention. Crawford had just enough clear space on his desk for his laptop and coffee mug. He was cradling the cup, though he’d finished his drink several minutes ago. He was in his mid-forties, thinning hair shaved to stubble dark as his perpetual five o’clock shadow. Bullet head, battleship jaw, meat-tenderizer hands, he looked like he would be more at home bashing immigrants in the street than ensconced as a physicist at the University of Kent. There was nothing of the yob in his voice, though. His tones were gentle, his speech a deep, comforting murmur with just enough inflection to keep the listener interested. Meacham thought he was the most convincing speaker she’d ever heard, and they’d only been discussing his work in the most general terms. His was the voice of reason personified. No wonder the true believers hated him. He could make them sound like psychotic cranks by saying no more than “Good morning.”

  Meacham was sitting in a chair facing Crawford. He needed new furniture. The chair squeaked whenever she moved. She tried to keep still.

  Crawford said, “I appreciate your being candid about who you are. I am, therefore, very curious to know what possible interest my work could be to the CIA.”

  “Fair enough.” Meacham laid it out for him: Gethsemane Hall, Adams, the clean-up mission.

  After she was done, Crawford looked pensive. “My turn to be honest,” he said at last. “I won’t pretend that the CIA is my favourite organization.”

  Meacham shrugged. Not mine, either, she thought.

  “In fact, I have serious ethical issues with just about everything you do.”

  She shrugged again. “We’re not in it for the love. But what are you telling me? That you’re not interested?”

  “I didn’t say that. Gethsemane Hall is pretty well known. I’d like the opportunity to investigate it.”

  “So?”

  “So I want things to be clear between us. My investigation will be independent and will go where I see fit, and I will publish my findings regardless of whether they help or hinder your agenda.”

  “Have you ever found evidence of a genuine haunting?” Meacham asked.

  “No. Never.”

  She smiled. “Then I don’t think we’re going to wind up working against each other.”

  “Right, then.” Crawford’s grin was small, but it was a good one. “Tell me something, though. No offense, but your outfit has never worried too much about being rigorously truthful. If you want to debunk the ghost angle, all you have to do is announce that you conducted an investigation, even if you didn’t, and that there is no such thing as ghosts, even if there is. It isn’t as if most people will have their minds changed about you, one way or another. Why bother with me?”

  “You implied it yourself. When was the last time anybody believed what the Agency had to say?”

  “I see. I’m your credibility.”

  There was more to it than that, though Crawford wa
s right. “I want the investigation done properly. It’s important to me.”

  Crawford gave her a searching look. “You do sincerity very well,” he said, reluctant optimism in his voice.

  “All in the training,” Meacham said, and Crawford laughed. “Do you believe in ghosts at all?” she asked.

  “Never seen a reason to, yet. Do you?”

  “No.”

  Crawford must have seen that she wanted to say more. “But ...?” he prompted.

  “I’ve read a few of your articles. This business about magnetic fields ...”

  He nodded. “I know. That almost sounds like crackpottery itself, doesn’t it?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “I did. The thing is, magnetic fields can be measured. And don’t mistake me. I am not arguing that the fields are ley lines or any such rubbish. I think the case is fundamentally pretty simple and logical. In locations where there have been consistent reports of hauntings, there are also measurable magnetic field fluctuations. So which makes more sense: presences from beyond or the observers being affected by the fields?”

  “That’s a rhetorical question.”

  “It is.” Crawford looked sly. “But I believe I detected a need for reassurance in the way you brought up the subject.”

  “I guess I find the idea that you don’t have to believe in ghosts to experience something a bit disturbing.”

  “You mean the fact that you might is disturbing.”

  “Hard-core rationalists don’t like thinking they could be susceptible.”

  “No, we don’t,” Crawford agreed.

  “Have you ever experienced anything?”

  “Not often, but yes, I have. I had a few creepy moments at Bromwell, I don’t mind telling you. Knowing what the likely cause for the willies is does rather take the sting out of them, though.”

  “That’s what I want to hear. I want to be able to trust my own investigation.”

  “Then I can reassure you. If you know what to expect, sensing presences won’t be that big a deal. It will almost be a disappointment if you don’t.”