The Lost Village

by Neil Spring

  ‘Call it what you like, it makes no sense to me.’ He looked again out of the little window; the dark auditorium seemed like a magnet to his eyes. ‘Sometimes,’ he said, ‘after hours, I see people down there. In their seats. I know how that sounds, but I see them, I do. They don’t move, they don’t speak, they just sit there. Outlines in the dark. An audience that isn’t there.’

  I tried picturing that – shadowy forms of the departed, the brooding empty seats – and felt the prickle of gooseflesh on my arms. ‘That’s why you came down looking for me. You thought I might be . . .’

  He nodded and we fell silent. The silence was a comfortable one this time, and very quickly it rekindled the vague notion that I shared a faraway connection with this man. Somehow. Something in common.

  ‘Well,’ I said, to snap him out of his reverie, ‘as you can see, I am no ghost.’

  I went to the viewing window and looked down at where I had fallen from the stage. It was impossible to see the spot directly from this angle. Which meant the projectionist was either mistaken or lying, or he had indeed seen something . . . abnormal.

  ‘I know what you’re thinking. You’re wondering how I could see anything with it being so dark in there. But there was a red light floating and bobbing through the rows of empty seats. Some sort of . . . orb.’

  ‘I don’t recall seeing any light,’ I said.

  ‘But it was there,’ he countered. ‘It was in there with you, Miss Grey.’

  That left me cold. But he wasn’t finished yet.

  ‘One night,’ he said, wringing his hands, ‘I was doing my usual checks in the chambers beneath the stage, close to the original eighteenth-century foundations, when I glanced over my shoulder and I saw the figure of a young woman. I called out to her, as I called out to you earlier tonight. I told her she had to leave. Seconds later, she was just . . . gone.’

  ‘Gone?’

  ‘Vanished.’

  ‘And that convinced you?’

  His head snapped up. ‘I didn’t say I believed in ghosts, miss. I’m only telling you what I saw.’

  ‘Thank you, Albert. I appreciate that. And I believe you.’

  ‘You do?’ A weary kind of relief came onto his face.

  Something beneath the stage. The thought broke in from nowhere, but was too powerful to ignore.

  ‘Take me down there, won’t you, please? Beneath the stage. Show me where you saw this woman.’

  Albert gave me a strange look.

  ‘I’ll go alone if I have to,’ I told him, ‘but I do want to see. Show me the way down.’

  His head was shaking vigorously. ‘Working here as long as I have, you get to know a building, every nook and cranny. The chambers below ground are out of bounds.’

  ‘Clearly not to you.’

  ‘Miss, down there, no one can hear you. It’s not safe, especially not with your ankle—’

  The dusty bare light bulb above us hummed, flickering for a moment. I sprang back, letting out a small cry. Instantly, the projectionist whirled round. His eyes were riveted on the metal door but he made no attempt to open it. His breathing quickened; his shoulders trembled.

  Somewhere beneath us, in the foyer maybe, a door slammed.

  ‘We must go—’ I started to say, but Albert swung round and cut me off.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘No. You don’t understand, miss.’ He reached for his antique projector. ‘I have to leave. I must leave.’

  ‘It’s all right,’ I said, not knowing if it was or wasn’t, but knowing I had to do something. ‘Wait here – you have a good view of the auditorium. Keep an eye on me, all right? I’ll go and investigate.’

  ‘I really don’t think—’ be began, sounding close to terrified now, but I cut him off with a reassuring glance.

  ‘Albert, trust me. I’ve done this before, it’ll be all right.’

  I sounded confident, but as my hand found the door handle I didn’t feel that way. I didn’t feel confident at all.

  – 4 –

  OLD HABITS

  Moments later I was alone in the grand theatre foyer, standing before the double doors to the auditorium and peering through the circular viewing window. I saw nothing within but clotted darkness; heard nothing but silence. I put my hand to the doors, pushed them and entered.

  The centre aisle sloped downwards beneath an ornate cantilevered balcony towards the stage, and I began to feel my way along carefully, seat by seat. It was pitch black; no sign of the ghostly red ‘orb’ the projectionist claimed to have seen from his window.

  What would Price make of that? Some unknown atmospheric phenomenon?

  No, he would go further: he would postulate that Albert was deluded, infected by the superstitions of haunted theatres. Albert saw a light because that was what he expected to see, and the loneliness of his position, combined with a fanciful disposition, only made him more likely to see it. Locational bias.

  Maybe that was right. Maybe.

  I wasn’t frightened, but I suppose my nerves were on edge, which was why, rather than venture deeper into that artificial darkness, I stopped and called up to the projectionist in his cine-chamber.

  ‘Albert, please, are you still up there? Switch the ghost light on.’

  He made no reply, but he must have heard me, because seconds later the solitary bulb on the stage up ahead buzzed and flickered, before dimming to a steady yellow glow.

  His words came back to me then: The ghost light does not keep spirits away. It attracts them.

  I should go back.

  But something was drawing me on. I wanted to go on. I wanted, for some reason I did not completely understand, but could not resist, to see beyond the ornate art deco façade of this building, into its heart, beneath the stage; to continue what I had started and to discover why for so many months I had felt drawn to this place and the dank, dingy passageways I knew were waiting below.

  And anyway, I told myself, I had been in far worse situations than this. It wasn’t as if I were crawling through cobwebs and grime under the eaves of a rambling old house miles from anywhere. That said, the deserted movie palace was certainly eerie. Thickly silent. The ghost light throwing a sickly glint off the acoustic wood and gold wall panelling.

  ‘Albert, you shout out if you see anything from up there, all right?’

  No reply.

  I focused on the bare bulb up on the stage ahead of me, and crept stealthily towards it.

  That was when I caught the scent of burning again, like you do when someone has lit a candle nearby. Except . . .

  No sign of any flame, anywhere.

  I was standing now exactly where Albert had found me: next to the first row of seats in the theatre. Thankfully, I had tripped close enough to the side of the stage that I had avoided falling into the dark orchestra pit.

  I tried hard not to think about those many poor children, who perished here in the fire. A glint caught my eye – something at my feet, throwing back the reflection of the ghost light. Kneeling and straining to see, I could just about make out something small and oblong on the carpet. What was it? Something the projectionist had dropped?

  Naturally enough, I picked it up. Holding it between my fingers, I saw that it was fashioned from wood, its angles smooth and regular.

  Suddenly – a wracking shudder.

  A blinding white flash.

  Perhaps it was exhaustion, perhaps I had hit my head harder than I thought. Whatever it was, I felt plunged into a dreamlike obscurity, as though the panelled walls, the carpeted floor, my entire surroundings had fallen away.

  I was caught in another place, a warm place where the grass stood waist-high, swaying around me. Everything was still and hazy and silent. Vast and limitless was the view ahead of me, golden fields and little woods ruffled by a late summer wind. In the distance, next to a glistening pond, a mill whe
el passed the slow turns of the day. The orange glow of the late afternoon sun showed the rooftops of the nearby village and the white ribbon of a track cutting through a vast forest.

  And then, just as abruptly as I had left, I was back in the empty auditorium, where the solitary ghost light cast its sickly glow.

  Now the fear came again, spreading through me like a creeping black shadow.

  What the hell had just happened? Where had I gone?

  The warm place.

  I looked down at the object in my hand. Its wooden sides framed a fixed sheet of glass bearing the faintest image. A photographic lantern slide. I felt the strangest sensation. A tingling, crawling in the palm of my hand, but that had to be my imagination. I slipped the slide into my overcoat pocket, and at that instant the giant screen behind me flickered. Burst into light.

  I spun round.

  My heart almost burst with surprise. The silent picture from earlier was spooling again. In jerky movements, a phantom coach was bearing a young traveller into the land of the dead, white trees like talons clawing their way out of the filthy earth. Some poor soul being stolen away to a monster’s castle.

  ‘Albert, can you please turn that off?’ I intended it to sound casual, but it came out sounding stern.

  On the screen, the hideous form of a creature with fangs approached slowly, emerging from the shadows.

  ‘Albert!’ I shouted.

  I squinted up towards the cine-chamber.

  No sign of Albert.

  I began to grow annoyed. Was he trying to frighten me? No. More likely he had abandoned his post; he had said he needed to go. But go where?

  Alarm seized me then. Albert hadn’t seemed very steady on his feet, not steady at all. What if he had come after me in a hurry and tripped, fallen on the stairs? It didn’t explain why he had turned on the projector, but it might explain why he wasn’t answering.

  I turned and started back up the aisle. I was passing the third row of seats when I noticed that the double doors were open, allowing neon light to seep in from the foyer. A figure was silhouetted in the doorway.

  ‘Oh, Albert, thank heavens. I thought you had—’

  I froze.

  The shadowy silhouette I was looking at, the figure framed in the doorway, blocking my exit, was not Albert.

  A thought surfaced and bobbed in my consciousness like a corpse released from the murky depths: a spirit.

  ‘Oh dear God,’ I whispered, and for an instant it felt as if time had slowed down. Stopped.

  ‘Well, well. Sarah. Here you are. It’s funny, but I remember wondering if you were the sort of woman who likes to take risks.’

  That voice, those words . . .

  The figure took one step forward.

  Two steps.

  Three.

  And I recognised the black frock coat that came down to his knees and the hat in the style of Humphrey Bogart; a black felt fedora, tipped forward.

  And I clung to nearest seat and whispered again, ‘Oh dear God.’

  Just turn and walk away.

  But I was too stunned to move.

  ‘Well, Sarah, surely I deserve a “hello”?’

  ‘Harry?’

  I felt oddly detached, as if I were witnessing this scene from outside myself.

  For the briefest of moments, it was as if the last six months had never happened, that I had never found new employment with Mr Addison at the film company in Soho, or rediscovered my social life at the jazz clubs in Piccadilly. I could still have been the confidential secretary at the National Laboratory for Psychical Research, sharing with Price the thrill of that unpredictable path into the unknown and the exposing of yet another fraudulent spiritualist intent on making a fat living from the bereaved and vulnerable.

  His face was shaded but I could tell he was looking at me with focused intensity. I noted the dark pouches under his eyes. He’d been spending too much time in that vast library of his. Alone.

  A flash of anger shattered my shock. ‘What the hell are you doing here?’

  ‘Come now, Sarah,’ he said. ‘You’re a clever woman. It’s just a question of cause and effect. What do you think I am doing here?’

  ‘You followed me.’

  ‘I assure you I did nothing of the sort,’ he said calmly, removing his hat. ‘Oh, don’t do this. You know how it is with peculiar old buildings. They have that persistent but frustrating propensity to just . . . reel me in!’

  I shook my head defiantly; it was too much of a—

  ‘Coincidence? Lazy assumption. That’s just another way of describing something we can’t explain. Why not name this encounter for what it is? Synchronicity! Meaningful coincidence.’ His face lit up with boyish excitement, and he added, ‘We are meant to be here, right now. You and me, Sarah. We were drawn here.’

  ‘I didn’t think you believed in all that.’ My words came out sounding heavy and sour.

  ‘Well, all right.’ He stared at me a moment, then cracked a grin. ‘When I saw the newspaper accounts two days ago, the reports of unexplained happenings in a cinema after dark, I’m afraid I couldn’t help myself. Honestly, though, I had no idea you’d be here.’

  I looked at him doubtfully. It was true, Price rarely lost any time before setting out to investigate. ‘Information is like bread,’ he used to preach at me. ‘It goes stale very quickly – so it’s our duty to get it out there as soon as we can, so it can be hungrily devoured.’

  ‘Fascinating old place,’ Price continued, glancing around at the empty seats trimmed with green velvet and the flickering silver screen behind me. The helpless traveller in the film had entered the monster’s lair now and I was almost expecting the gleaming white and gold pipe organ at the front of the stage to start playing on its own.

  Price’s gaze floated up to the vaulted ceiling and down to the brass safety rail running around the cantilevered balcony above us.

  ‘Oh yes, most atmospheric. Yes, I’ll certainly give it that. But I suspect there’s precious little here of any interest to psychical research.’

  Something beneath the stage, I thought, with a kind of grim curiosity, and I thought of the projectionist, Albert, and his antique projector, of the intriguing small object tucked away in my pocket, and the warm place to which I had travelled in my mind just moments ago. The experience had the hazy, indefinable quality of a dream, but I could still feel the glow of the sun on my neck and the breeze against my face. It was too eerie.

  ‘Little here of interest,’ I repeated. ‘You’re confident about that, Harry?’

  He nodded. ‘Heard a door slam, that was all. I had a quick nose about, went up to the projection booth.’

  ‘Did you meet Albert, the projectionist?’

  Price looked at me blankly.

  ‘Well, you must have seen him. I was just up there with him. I doubt very much Albert would have just walked out and left me in here,’ I said, remembering how he said he wanted to do just that.

  ‘Well, he’s gone now, Sarah. We are alone and there’s nothing to fear. You can take that assurance to the bank.’ Price looked out at the auditorium and shrugged. ‘Once you’ve seen one creaky old theatre, you’ve seen them all.’

  ‘Then you’ve had a wasted trip.’

  He turned and met my stare. ‘Oh, I wouldn’t say that.’

  The tenderness of his gaze was tinged with an intensity of purpose. He probably thought his expression exuded boyish charm, but all it did was kindle my frustrations.

  I threw a look at the vampire on the flickering screen and then glared at my old employer. It was just like him to pull a stunt like this. Creep up to the cine-chamber, set the projector in motion. Thrills and chills were the ghost hunter’s speciality.

  ‘Sarah, why do you look at me like that? Such disdain, as if I myself were a trickster.’

  I couldn�
��t contain my anger any longer. ‘That is exactly what you are! You tricked Velma, one of your closest friends – Harry, she was dying – into performing before a live audience when you knew you would expose her as a fraud. Humiliate her.’

  ‘Not this again. I tried to warn her—’

  ‘And didn’t you trick me when you arranged to sell the laboratory from under us, put me out of a job, without ever mentioning your intentions, not once?’

  ‘The negotiations were in a delicate phase of—’

  ‘You suppressed knowledge of a hoaxed séance in which I was personally involved. You breezily walked away from the rectory in Borley, leaving the Smiths to deal with the mess you left behind, like some sort of travelling salesman! Then you left me alone in that stinking laboratory of yours for months—’

  ‘Sarah, please, I was unwell. I tried—’

  ‘No, you didn’t! You made me feel worthless!’ I brushed his hand aside as he reached out to me. Then, for a moment, a chasm of silence opened between us. He opened his mouth to say something, closed it again. Outside I could hear the winter wind whining around the corners of the old theatre.

  The scratch of a match; a cigar went to his delicate lips and glowed. There was the soft crackling of tobacco as he drew in a lungful of smoke.

  The scent of burning.

  The cigar tip glowing red again.

  The floating, bobbing red light.

  It was him. He was the one the projectionist had seen. Price all along. No ghostly glowing ‘orb’, nothing so sinister or otherworldly. Just Price’s smouldering cigar. How long had he been skulking around in this auditorium?

  ‘You walked out on me, Sarah. You had responsibilities.’

  ‘A life going nowhere.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said with a hint of mockery. ‘I suppose you were going nowhere’ – he released a mouthful of smoke – ‘until you met me.’

  The words skewered me, not just because they were cruel. Because they were true.

  Before taking employment with Price, I had been drifting, or, as Mother would put it, ‘a wanderer with my head in the clouds’. Taking the job had been a chance to better myself, and to find meaning in Mother’s ceaseless grief for my father; to show her, I suppose, that the answers to life’s problems weren’t to be found with spiritualist mediums communing with the dead, but with honest and open scientific inquiry.