by Neil Spring
‘From what?’ Price’s voice echoed around the chamber.
There followed a long pause, Pierre’s frightened sobbing the only sound. Then Albert turned his head, cutting me a disconcerting glare.
‘Her.’
What the hell have I done? Why does he need to protect himself from me?
As if hearing the question, Albert began shaking his head fearfully, never taking his eyes off me. ‘You. Always you,’ he said, fitfully. ‘Down here with me.’
‘But I’ve never been down here before.’
‘Liar!’ His ragged voice bounced around the chamber.
Beside me, Pierre coughed pitifully. ‘Don’t you worry, little man,’ I whispered to him. ‘Everything’s going to be—’
‘I saw this moment, you know. I made drawings of you! Detailed drawings.’
I looked at the projectionist, divided between confusion and anger. I had no idea what he was talking about. What’s more, Price’s face showed a small hint of understanding, which baffled me further. As Price looked towards me, we heard an unexpected sound.
The click of a safety catch.
I froze.
Price swivelled around to find himself confronted by the barrel of a service revolver. With a speed and agility I had not expected, Albert had leapt to his feet and pulled the revolver from his inner jacket pocket. He brandished it towards Price, a crazed look in his one functional eye.
‘Stand over there!’
Price’s feet crunched over shattered glass as he took his place next to me, close to the ladder and the cowering child. Probably, he was wishing he had searched Albert.
I got shakily to my feet, stepping in front of Pierre to shield him from the madman. Shoulder to shoulder with Price.
Albert’s demented focus turned on me. ‘You remember the night we met, miss?’
With a chill, I tried to ignore his gun, his trembling hand, his twitching finger. I concentrated instead on his dented face. I nodded.
‘I told you about the ghostly female figure beneath the stage.’
There was a moment of crackling communication between us.
‘It was you. Always you. In these cellars. For months and months, the magic lantern presented you to me, in the smoke. A projection of this very moment. You understand? I had a premonition of you. An old soul.’
I stared at him, speechless.
‘You are an old soul,’ he repeated, ‘and we are connected by our time in the village, Miss Grey. That’s why you found me. You were drawn here, to me.’
‘Nonsense,’ I insisted, though my voice trembled.
With his free hand, the projectionist produced from his pocket a wooden and glass lantern slide very like the one I had found upstairs. ‘They are like windows for me. They enable me to see the past and the future. They allow me to speak with old s—’
‘Rubbish,’ Price said abruptly. ‘Time doesn’t flow backwards. We can’t peer into the future like we dip into our memories of the past. Your illusions in the smoke are projections. Nothing more. Fantasies!’
‘NO!’ Albert yelled, the revolver shaking madly in his hand. ‘They are forces independent of the mind. The past, present and future, we can glimpse them all. They are entwined.’
I felt sure he was insane, driven mad by his own illusions and drugs. But those words he had used to describe me . . .
Old soul.
Albert took a step towards me. I felt as though he was looking right through my eye sockets and into my brain, flicking through my memories as though he were turning the pages of a book. ‘I see what was,’ he said, ‘and what is still to come.’
His hand tightened on the gun, keeping me in his sights. ‘The visions in the smoke – you know what I’m talking about, Miss Grey.’
I do know, I thought. You’re talking about the warm place. Where everything is still and hazy and quiet; where the mill wheel passes the slow turns of the day.
‘You don’t believe I foresaw this moment?’ he asked with a loaded tone. ‘Haven’t you wondered how the two of you crossed paths, the same night, in this picture house? Didn’t that strike you as peculiar?’
I didn’t like where this was going. Not one bit.
‘Didn’t you think it just a little coincidental?’ His voice became condescending, quietly menacing. ‘It was me, the ghost maker. I brought you together.’
I expected an instant cry of disbelief from Price, some rebuking dismissal, but for once he was silent, and I felt an immediate, paralysing betrayal. Albert picked up on it instantly. A bemused smile played on his lips as he said, ‘He hasn’t told you, has he?’
‘Harry?’
Albert released an intolerable laugh. A brutal laugh.
‘Your friend hasn’t been straight with you, miss. Not one bit. I drew a picture of what I saw in the smoke. I drew your face, Miss Grey. So, I contacted someone I thought might help me understand.’ He looked knowingly at Price. Resentfully. ‘Someone I hoped would be willing to listen. His reputation is the talk of the town. I wrote to him, more than once. I sent him letters. I sent my drawings, detailed descriptions, of you, Miss Grey. Because I knew you would be here. I foresaw it.’
A thudding realisation; Price’s explanation for that night coming back to me:
‘I received a letter. Typed. Anonymous. Telling me where I could find you, and when. Clearly, whoever wrote that letter wanted us to meet again.’
Price’s face was paling, his eyes avoiding mine.
‘Harry? You never mentioned any drawings!’
‘He didn’t?’ The projectionist took a step nearer. ‘What a shame, that the great Harry Price can’t recognise the truth when it’s presented to him. Well, I can. When I saw your face in the smoke down here, Miss Grey, do you know what I thought? I believed you were dead, a vision from beyond, warning us to stop our interventions in Imber. I see now that I was wrong, that God was sending you to help, to put an end to this awful thing we have done. Do you understand?’
‘No,’ I replied quickly.
‘I had a vision of this meeting, this moment. I knew you would come. I made it happen.’
‘For what purpose?’ I asked. ‘Albert, what do you want?’
His answer left me in no doubt that our biggest struggle was yet to come.
‘I want help.’
– 30 –
THE GHOST MAKER
The domed brick chamber glowed under the flickering rays of the single oil lamp at our feet.
I stood between Pierre and Albert, my body rigid, unwilling to trust Sidewinder’s son, no matter how much sincerity was in his voice.
‘If you needed our help, why wait, hidden away down here with the boy? Why not just come to us? Why bother with the elaborate light show just now?’
‘I wanted you to understand, to see. The Devil’s Snare induces physic experiences, letting the rest of the world fade out, opening your mind to realities beyond the reach of normal senses.’
‘Albert—’
‘Let me speak!’ Albert silenced Price, his eyes bulging with a zealot’s fanaticism. ‘You will hear me. And you, Miss Grey, are going to believe me, even if the great Harry Price does not.’
Price shifted awkwardly. Albert’s hand with the gun was shaking again. I was terrified that if it shook much more, one of us was going to get hurt. Badly.
Trying to put some empathy in my voice, I said, ‘I know how lonely you must feel, and I’m willing to listen. I want to believe you. But Albert, why not let Pierre go? He looks like he needs fresh air, doesn’t he?’ That was an understatement. The cowering child looked deathly pale. Half dead. ‘How long has he been down here with you, Albert?’
‘Years.’
‘Why? Why have you kept him imprisoned in this godforsaken place?’
‘My father,’ he gulped, his voice straining. ‘My father ma
de me. You see? I answer to him.’
‘Just let Pierre go,’ I said, ‘and we’ll talk. No one needs to be harmed.’
A moment of indecision flashed across Albert’s face, broken by a quick nod.
Price gave Albert a look of harsh contempt, and then stooped and began working to loosen the knot around Pierre’s ankle. ‘Is it true?’ he asked. ‘You and Warden Sidewinder – your father – kidnapped this boy, faked his death and faked the hauntings?’
Still training the gun on us, Albert gave Pierre a guilt-filled glance, and nodded. ‘Some of them were real . . .’
‘Really? Well, what about the ones you did fake?’
‘It is not my guilt alone. I . . . contributed.’
‘By helping your father to orchestrate séances like the wretched one we attended?’ said Price. ‘Séances intended to drive the soldiers out of Imber?’
Was that the only motive? It sounded grossly simplistic to me. And risky.
‘I have made a mistake,’ he said, his voice cracking.
‘A mistake? You melted a young man’s face,’ Price hissed. ‘Sergeant Edwards spends every day in agony because of what you did. You and your father ripped apart an innocent family.’ He gestured to the trembling Pierre, whose ankle he had almost worked loose from the knot. ‘At the Imber mill you used drugs to convince me this poor child was a spirit. You even convinced his own mother and father! How? Why?’ Albert let out a wretched sob.
‘Answer me!’ cried Price.
‘I’m the one giving orders,’ gasped Albert, the gun shaking ever more wildly in his hands.
My breath caught. He was unravelling – and quickly. We needed to get Pierre to safety.
‘Albert? I interrupted. ‘Let’s take this one step at a time. Pierre can climb up and wait in the upper chamber, all right?’
He nodded, and Price and I immediately directed the boy towards the ladder. Pierre looked uncertainly back at us.
‘Go on.’ I nudged him gently. ‘You wait up there for us. Everything will be fine. I promise.’
My heart was in my mouth as Pierre climbed the ladder, Price standing beneath it to catch him in case he should fall.
‘Well done,’ I said to Albert, swallowing with relief. ‘You did the right thing.’
Albert glared at me. He still had the service revolver on us but now his eyes were brimming with tears. ‘After the war,’ he said, ‘I needed to see my friends who were gunned down. Imber was a small village, and we had been a strong team. I missed them so. When my father saw my artistry, the wonders I could create with my projections, a plan was devised. To fake the boy’s death. To use him to help get the soldiers out.’
‘You provided the way,’ I said, ‘and your father, Sidewinder, provided the means.’
Standing in the centre of the chamber, Albert nodded again, but now his face was souring as he looked across at the filthy mattress. ‘He forced me to keep the boy down here.’
Barely able to control my anger, I took a step towards him, trying to pretend the gun was no longer in his hand. ‘Don’t you understand the enormity of what you’ve done? A faked death. A kidnapping. The abject maltreatment of this child! Why would you participate in something so obscene?’
There was a long silence. ‘I told you before, I had to work alone in the dark.’
‘I don’t see what that has to do with—’
‘I helped my father for the same reason I hide down here, away from the world.’ He raised his free hand to his strangely dented face. For a moment, his hand hovered very close to his left ear. And then the impossible happened.
The left side of his face came away in his hooked fingers.
Cheekbone, jawbone, half of his nose – all were removed to reveal a deep black cavity.
‘Oh, good lord . . .’
I heard Price draw a shocked breath.
‘Do you have any idea what it’s like to go through life disfigured like this – a horror to others, and to yourself?’ Albert asked bitterly. The service revolver was shaking again.
That face, I’ll never forget it. Blown out of his head. Ruined. Grotesque.
A war injury, I thought. His father told us so.
That sort of injury condemned a man to isolation, unless it could be treated, or covered up with a mask. That was what he was holding now in his shuddering hand – most likely a copper prosthetic.
I had read about the treatment in the newspapers. After the Great War, after the horrific injuries suffered by soldiers on the battlefields, talented sculptors would take plaster casts of the intact areas of a maimed veteran’s face, then craft a partial mask, which was painted to match the skin and tied to the head with string. Crude by today’s standards, but the idea was to help people like Albert fit in. Those who didn’t feel able to do that sometimes took jobs out of the public eye, often working in the dark.
I wondered how many other men like Albert were out there, men with severe facial disfigurements, cowering with shame in hot, cramped projection booths?
I dared again to glance at his face, his true face, if that was even the word. It was impossible not to feel some pity. And now another piece of the jigsaw fell into place.
‘Your father paid for your prosthetics in return for your help, didn’t he? That’s how he persuaded you to keep the boy here, embroiled you in his deceptions.’
It was the truth, I could see it in his face.
‘What I don’t understand is why your father, a man serving in the army himself, would want the army out of Imber?’ I asked. It made no sense to me. Unless . . .
‘Someone else is involved,’ he said heavily. ‘We are both being blackmailed.’
‘By whom?’
Albert turned to Price. ‘Come on, Harry Price. Earn your stripes. You were present at the mill séance. How did we get the boy into the mill without you seeing?’
Lost for an answer, Price shook his head, his face blank.
‘We made certain every entranceway was sealed tight,’ I said.
‘You didn’t notice the discoloured bricks in the back wall?’ Albert asked.
‘A concealed entranceway?’ I asked.
Albert nodded.
Price’s eyes were full of doubt.
‘Oh, Mr Price,’ Albert said, with a trace of contempt. ‘You didn’t notice the lower portion of the back wall was partially constructed from false bricks?’
‘What?’
A flash of memory:
‘The bricks here look uneven, don’t you think, Harry? Discoloured?’
‘False bricks made from foam. Those bricks concealed a gap in the wall just large enough for the boy to crawl through. Just small enough not to be too conspicuous. Painted foam bricks, which were quietly removed during the séance. The magic lantern was positioned at that exact opening.’
‘Even if that were true,’ said Price, ‘how would you get him out again so quickly?’
‘The candles were extinguished,’ I said, remembering how we were plunged into darkness. ‘When Vernon’s camera went off, there was a struggle.’
Albert was still nodding. ‘In your struggle, there was time for the boy to slip out. Time for me to put the bricks, light as they are, back into place. The opening was only small. Of course, the poor light helped.’
‘Tell us now,’ I said, ‘who else is involved? Who’s the accomplice?’
‘The same monster who is blackmailing my father.’
He uttered a name, and left me dumbstruck.
– 31 –
IMBER WILL LIVE
‘Oscar Hartwell? You’re saying the boy’s father is behind this?’
My voice echoed off the damp cellar walls as I took a sidelong glance at Price and saw that he too was stunned. Pierre’s father?
Impossible! I remembered Hartwell’s display of grief during the séance, his
absolute bewilderment when the boy had vanished. I hadn’t doubted the man’s sincerity then, not even for a moment.
But now I remembered something else: my arrival in Imber and Pierre’s ghostly appearance at the roadside. Wasn’t it Hartwell who had appeared, just seconds later, almost running me down?
Oh God, how could I have missed it?
What other clues had I missed? They came to me now, flooding my mind: the villagers who had regarded Hartwell with trepidation at his child’s funeral, and later, at the church service. Hartwell had attributed all of that to his son’s disease, but now another memory made me see this in a different light: when Price and I had arrived at the mill, the warden was already there, alone, with Hartwell. Certainly, we had thought it odd – Price had been the first to demand the two men explain themselves. But never had the possibility entered our minds that the father himself was behind the trickery. To force his son to endure such misery, to imprison him in a London cellar, suggested there was much at stake for him in the orchestration of this devilish deception. He had either much to gain or an unfathomable amount to lose. With the looming public rally in Imber, both possibilities were equally worrying.
‘Why would Hartwell do that to Pierre?’ I said, looking up at the hatch through which Pierre had escaped. He must have heard me, for just then his little face peeped down at mine. I wanted to hug the wretched child. I smiled reassuringly at him and then turned back to Albert and Price. ‘Why would Hartwell do such an abysmal thing to his own son?’
Doubt flashed across Albert’s ruined face.
‘Did Marie know?’ I asked.
‘I don’t know. I don’t think so. Hartwell told her Pierre was dead, practically pushed her into madness.’
The idea sickened me. ‘Why would Hartwell do something so cruel, so risky, so absurd?’ I shook my head.
‘Why else? To reclaim his cherished Imber Court. He wanted the soldiers gone.’
I struggled to think, my head still groggy. ‘But having a son meant everything to Oscar, and to the Hartwell family. Would he really go to such extreme measures – falsifying his son’s death, deceiving his wife?’
I could see Albert struggling, still training the gun on us.