The Lost Village

by Neil Spring

  ‘News has got out, I suppose,’ said Price. ‘Do you have an official line?’

  ‘Only that a serious incident occurred on the training range today, resulting in the death of a civilian, and that we are investigating,’ the commander answered unhappily. ‘The War Office want us to open the village again next week, in an acknowledgement of today’s tragedy.’

  Price pulled a face of disapproval.

  ‘We’ve heard word from the police that there’s already talk of a protest outside Imber – a full public demonstration in support of the Imber Will Live campaign. The War Office want us to welcome the protestors with open arms, if you please.’

  ‘What does Hartwell say?’ I wanted to know. As the leader of the campaign, he seemed best suited to advise, and I longed to know how the poor gentleman was faring.

  ‘Mr Hartwell is in the sickbay. Our doctors are doing their best to calm him down.’

  That didn’t sit well with me. ‘Have you sedated him?’

  ‘Mr Hartwell refused medication,’ the commander said.

  ‘Yes. Under the circumstances, I think that’s wise,’ I replied.

  The commander squared his shoulders. ‘You mustn’t think that we have any sort of covert agenda here, Miss Grey. What happened in the bell tower today was indeed a tragedy, and we are acting in the best interests of everyone—’

  ‘As a matter of fact, Commander, you have been less than honest with us all,’ I said, sitting upright in my chair. Price looked at me curiously, surprised by my intervention. I fancied I had an opportunity here to make him take a fresh interest in the case. I remembered the crucifixes we had photographed inside the old mill and felt a flush of determination warm my cheeks. ‘And now you’re fretting because people are going to demand answers about what’s been happening in Imber. Personally, I’m with them.’

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘With all due respect, Commander, don’t the people deserve answers?’

  ‘Sarah.’ Price touched my shoulder, but I shrugged his hand off me.

  ‘No, Harry. The military have a duty of care – for the soldiers based here, for Imber itself and for its former residents. The village is in ruins. A soldier has been driven mad and now a villager is dead. I have a good mind to go to the newspapers myself!’

  ‘And violate the Official Secrets Act?’ the commander challenged.

  ‘Don’t think I wouldn’t,’ I said, with more conviction than I felt. ‘You already know, sir, I am extremely well connected with the newspapers. After all, that was how we became acquainted, wasn’t it?’

  The commander looked uncertainly at me.

  Price also cut me an inquisitive glance.

  Damn!

  ‘Sarah, to whom are you referring?’

  There wasn’t just interest in Price’s tone, there was suspicion, too.

  I could have mentioned Vernon Wall then, explained how we had both been drawn into this situation by a man that Price hated, but Vernon’s involvement was a card I still intended to play, so instead I kept silent.

  Annoyance had soured Sidewinder’s face, but he still sounded carefully reasonable. ‘Let’s just say we do this your way, Miss Grey.’ He glanced at the commander, who wet his lips then nodded at him to continue. ‘What precisely would you like to know?’

  I switched my attention to Sidewinder, remembering how keen he had been to impress upon Price his encyclopaedic knowledge of paranormal phenomena, how ardently he had objected to our presence here, and how zealous he had seemed in his supernatural beliefs. All of that had to come from somewhere, didn’t it? ‘Let’s go back to the beginning – Sergeant Edwards and the night he doused himself in petrol and set himself alight. Where were you?’

  The question echoed in the room.

  ‘Warden?’ I asked. ‘Edwards stated that his men vanished. Could it be that you were out in the woods yourself?’

  ‘What draws you to that conclusion?’ said Sidewinder, his tone full of indignant surprise.

  ‘You’ve already told us it was you who found Sergeant Edwards, the morning after he set himself on fire. I suppose it’s possible you just stumbled upon him when you did, but on the other hand—’

  ‘Perhaps you already knew his location?’ Price cut in.

  I looked at Price, surprised and a little encouraged. Perhaps I had reinvigorated his interest after all. ‘We could interview the other soldiers,’ I continued. ‘They might tell us, even if you won’t.’

  Sidewinder wasn’t looking at me. His gaze had gone to the commander, who gave an acquiescent, if reluctant, nod, permitting him to answer.

  ‘I didn’t want it to come to this,’ Sidewinder said, glancing at the Imber map on the wall. ‘But it seems we have arrived at a reckoning . . .’

  I watched the warden as he removed his spectacles, breathed on them and rubbed them on his sleeve. When he placed them back on his face his eyes looked sharper than before, but they weren’t focused on us. His gaze was caught on something long ago, something haunting. ‘On the night Sergeant Edwards attempted suicide, I was at the Imber mill.’

  Price nodded. ‘And the other men were with you?’

  ‘Five of us,’ Sidewinder said stiffly. ‘All except Edwards. He had an inkling about what we were doing, of course, but he didn’t approve. He felt our activities were dangerous. But you see, our experiments were showing real promise.’

  Price cocked a concerned eyebrow.

  Sidewinder cleared his throat. ‘Communing with the dead,’ he said weightily.

  The words were out and hung between us.

  For a moment, I half-expected Sidewinder to smirk, to own up to a sick joke. But instead he said, ‘Messages were received from the great beyond. Spirit messages, warning of grave danger in Imber.’

  ‘You were conducting spiritualist séances at the abandoned mill,’ Price said, then he turned to the commander. ‘And you, presumably, knew nothing about this.’

  Williams shifted a little in his chair. ‘The moment I discovered these practices were taking place – when we found Sergeant Edwards injured – I immediately disciplined the men. Warden Sidewinder here told me everything and I hoped that would be the end of it. These séances had been going on for months.’

  ‘That explains the candles at the mill,’ I said. ‘The crucifixes?’

  Williams responded with a sorrowful nodding of the head. ‘The séances got quite out of hand. We had to keep a lid on it, you understand? The men were scaring themselves senseless.’

  Price looked sharply at Sidewinder. ‘What exactly did the “spirits” impart that so petrified the men?’

  There was silence, then, as the commander and Sidewinder stared at one another, but the unspoken question passing between them seemed obvious: Do we tell them?

  ‘You might as well come clean now,’ I snapped. Instead of feeling vindication for having exposed these men’s deceptions, I felt the flushes of anger and a gust of determination. An innocent woman was dead, after all, and a soldier horribly disfigured for life.

  When the commander nodded his permission, Sidewinder, white-haired and deathly pale, walked to the wall, gazing once more at the map of the village. He raised one gnarled hand and pressed his palm against it, as if in an act of communion.

  ‘The spirits of Imber seek vengeance for the homes, the lives, that were stolen from them,’ he said, in a voice so low it was difficult to hear. ‘That night . . . Sergeant Edwards had followed us out there. He overheard. He saw too much. He was so profoundly disturbed by the information revealed to him that it seems to have driven him to suicide. He was a completely broken man. I only wish we had been able to . . .’ Sidewinder’s voice broke off.

  I nodded comprehension of this information and tried working through its implications. Now the blanket of secrecy we had confronted here made a little more sense. If this got out, the consequences
for the military on Salisbury Plain would be devastating. Villagers, still incensed at the military’s refusal to allow them to return to Imber, especially those whose families had lived there for centuries, would be further antagonised by such news. Outraged.

  On the other hand, it was possible Warden Sidewinder was lying to us, but for what motive? More likely he had seen something deeply strange at the old mill, but was mistaken, hoaxed possibly. We had to know more.

  ‘Why didn’t you come forward with this information earlier?’ I said.

  Sidewinder lowered his hand from the map and turned to face me. ‘Because it sounds so unbelievable, doesn’t it? What would you have done, if you had seen something so phenomenal? Something so controversial?’

  Kept it to myself, I thought, remembering the boy I had seen at the roadside. It had taken me long enough to tell Price about that. Was I justified in blaming these men for not being honest with us sooner? Perhaps not.

  ‘I don’t blame you for feeling some reticence in coming forward, Warden,’ I said, aware that Price was watching me keenly. Hopefully, my bravado was doing something to persuade him to stay. ‘Most witnesses to supernatural phenomena fear ridicule. But you might have hinted at the gravity of the situation.’

  ‘I warned you,’ Sidewinder said harshly. ‘I told you, the only road worth taking in Imber is the road out!’

  ‘What was the purpose of the Imber séances?’ Price asked. ‘Who led them?’

  ‘Oh, just tell them,’ the commander ordered. ‘Or I will.’

  Sidewinder took a breath. ‘I myself served as the conduit to the spirit world.’

  Price’s eyes flicked to me then back to Sidewinder. ‘Well, well. I take it you have always held an unhealthy fascination with the occult?’

  Sidewinder was silent for a moment or two, then he said, ‘Yes. Ever since my son returned from the war. Then he was extremely well acquainted with spiritual and supernatural matters. Eventually, his passion became mine.’

  It was the first time Sidewinder had mentioned another member of his family. Sometimes we miss the most obvious clues to the biggest mysteries in our lives, and that was how it was for me right then.

  ‘You’re telling us your son was a medium?’ Price asked.

  ‘He became one. He grew up in Imber. When he returned to Wiltshire, he was a loner. An outcast.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘His injuries from war were . . . horrific. Severe facial disfigurement. He found the village wrecked and out of bounds, and he contrived to gain entry. So many of his friends were killed on the battlefields, and he was consumed by a desire to contact them – so consumed that he would wander onto the Imber range, ignoring the Keep Out signs, just to get close to their old homes. Back then, the soldiers who knew what he was up to had a nickname for him. They called him the ghost maker, because he was able to make manifest the apparitions of the dead.’

  Price looked dubiously at him. ‘Your son coaxed you into spiritualism?’

  ‘He didn’t coax me into anything,’ Sidewinder replied, affronted. ‘I wanted to learn.’

  ‘Why?’ Price continued to probe. ‘Your son’s longing to contact his dead friends I can understand, but the source of your own paranormal enquiries strikes me as rather more curious.’

  It took Sidewinder a few seconds to elaborate. ‘I caused a death,’ he said slowly, looking once more at the map on the wall. ‘A long time ago. It was an accident, but I made a mistake, a very grave mistake, and I’ll say no more about that. But the mistake led me to spiritualism. And from my son I learned the ways of table tipping, automatic writing, even trance oratory.’

  ‘Mischievous nonsense.’

  ‘You may think so, Mr Price, but my son would frequently fall into trance-like states, speak in verse and experience visions of the dead. Eventually, he was in direct communication with residents of Imber who had passed on. He became a conduit to the afterlife. It was extraordinary, almost magical. They communicated with us, answered our questions, knocking once for yes and remaining silent for no.’

  ‘These séances – where did your son conduct them?’

  ‘At the old Imber mill.’

  ‘And where is your son now?’

  ‘We don’t speak any more.’

  ‘That wasn’t the question I asked.’

  ‘It is a sad fact, but we are estranged from one another. His séances became wildly out of hand. He was using all sorts of drugs, and he began to hear voices and act irrationally.’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘He created illusions. Began to believe they were real. I think he was losing his mind. He was putting my job in the army in jeopardy, so I told him he had to stop.’

  ‘And when he refused, you made him leave Wiltshire?’

  He nodded, barely able to look at us.

  ‘Yet you continued to practise the séances yourself?’ Price said, with an exclamation of astonishment.

  ‘Inevitably, I was drawn back to the mill. The power of that place – it was like a drug to me,’ Sidewinder said, his voice almost trembling. ‘I felt as if I had touched another world, and I needed to do so again. Can you understand that?’

  Both Price and I nodded. Of course we understood that.

  The commander, sitting behind his desk, looked adrift in a sea of doubt.

  ‘Some of the other soldiers on the base caught on to what I was doing. Followed me. They were curious too. They wanted to witness the wonders of the séance room.’

  ‘And I suppose you were only too happy to provide those wonders,’ Price said.

  ‘You speak as though you’re accusing me of fakery,’ Sidewinder shot back, ‘when in fact I have experienced the most remarkable phenomena, both physical and mental, which I have tested meticulously, and which prove the survival of human consciousness beyond bodily death.’

  Price crossed his arms. ‘That’s a bold claim,’ he said curtly. ‘An audacious claim.’

  Sidewinder shrugged. ‘You may doubt it, but the spirits of kindred beings do visit us. At the mill, our circle was visited by the spirit of a child. A little boy.’

  Icy fingers brushed my neck. ‘A boy?’ I asked.

  Sidewinder nodded adamantly.

  ‘A three-dimensional, fully formed spirit materialisation.’

  Materialisation. That word called up a memory of a controlled séance I had observed years earlier, at Price’s laboratory in Queensberry Place, when a medium had coaxed a ghostly shape to materialise out of a darkened cabinet. At one point, the spirit had even appeared to jangle a tambourine. But all of this had taken place under conditions that were less than ideal, conditions insisted upon by the medium herself – in poor light, for example, using a nickel-plated electric table lamp with a red globe and silk shade! How to tell what was real? It was Price who eventually located the secret compartment in the chair the medium had insisted on bringing. It was jam-packed with masks and wigs and clothes that the medium’s assistant would secretly adorn to impersonate the spirits. And if a more ghostly effect was required, stiffened muslin wrapped around the head and draped over the body completed the job. Amazing, now, to think people were fooled by such crude deceptions, but they really were. Thousands of times!

  As if reading my thoughts, Price said, ‘Spirit materialisations are usually hoaxed with the crudest props. Show me a spirit and I’ll show you a broom and a bed sheet!’

  ‘But this was totally different,’ Sidewinder insisted earnestly. ‘By the proof of my own eyes, we were visited by the spirit of a young boy.’

  ‘Could you identify the child?’

  ‘Yes. It was Pierre Hartwell. Oscar Hartwell’s son.’

  I felt a sharp stab of shock: the wandering child, his hollow, staring eyes.

  ‘How can you possibly know that?’ Price demanded.

  ‘Because his own mother identified him,’ said Si
dewinder.

  ‘Marie Hartwell? Price looked astonished. ‘You involved her in a séance to communicate with her son?’

  When Sidewinder nodded in reply to that question, I felt the flush of anger in my face.

  ‘That is why she returned to Imber, over and over again,’ said the commander.

  ‘Foolish man,’ Price growled at Sidewinder. ‘Foolish, foolish man! You’re the reason Marie Hartwell is dead. You realise that? Unspeakable charlatan. Dragging a vulnerable, grieving mother to a séance to see her dead son? Filling her head with false notions, false hope! Why, the shock of it must have driven her mad.’

  I ached for the Hartwell family. The revelation was unspeakably cruel. At the same time, it was predictable. How many innocent, credulous victims had the supernatural claimed?

  My concern quickly turned to Hartwell, in the sickbay. How much did he know about his wife’s involvement with the Imber séances? What if he didn’t know? That sort of information would be a terrible blow, maybe enough to send him over the edge.

  ‘Remember, the newspapers must learn nothing of this!’ the commander interjected sternly, and it was then that the plan that would advance our investigation began to solidify in my mind. A plan involving Vernon Wall . . .

  ‘You mustn’t assume that I did something wrong,’ Sidewinder said. His eyes were flat and contemptuous. ‘Thanks to my efforts, a mother was able to hold her long-dead child in her arms. And it was a beautiful sight to behold.’

  ‘She was grieving,’ Price hissed. ‘Vulnerable. Probably mentally ill. And you, sir, wilfully neglected a duty of care!’

  ‘You speak with gross and unpardonable ignorance, Mr Price. Does this look like a mental illness to you?’

  And with that, Sidewinder fished a curious object from his coat pocket. It looked very much like a dental cast, except its indentations were nothing like teeth.

  ‘This is the impression of the spirit child’s hand in putty.’

  He placed it gently on the commander’s desk.

  Price looked quizzical. ‘You carry this with you all of the time?’