by Neil Spring
‘Please, that’s enough, Albert,’ said Price.
He glanced down at the gun, looked up at us, and took a step nearer – aiming at Price. ‘You have to listen, before it’s too late. Hartwell and my father are planning something atrocious for Imber. A reckoning.’
Price’s gaze wavered between Albert and me. ‘What reckoning?’
‘The public rally,’ Albert replied. ‘Imber Will Live.’
‘Tomorrow?’ I asked. ‘Commander Williams has already taken steps to ensure the paths are made safe . . .’
I trailed off, realising that task – that vital task – had been entrusted to Warden Sidewinder. A sense of dreadful foreboding came upon me as I pictured the hordes of innocent civilians marching onto land that hadn’t been secured.
‘What exactly are the protestors planning?’ I asked Albert.
‘They want to make the War Office a laughing stock and reclaim their heritage.’
‘By occupying the buildings? The church?’
He nodded. ‘And the cottages, Brown’s Farm, the Bell Inn, even Imber Court. That’s where Hartwell will head, is my bet – his old home. And there’ll be too many people for the army to stop it.’
‘How many people?’
He shrugged. ‘Two thousand, perhaps. Maybe more.’
This is bigger than the commander thinks. They’re completely unprepared.
Trying not to sound panicked, I told Price how the commander was planning to placate the protestors by allowing them to use the road into the village, and how Warden Sidewinder was assisting him with that mission. That, despite my warnings, I suspected the commander still trusted Sidewinder, or was at least protecting him. Why? I had no idea.
When I had finished explaining, Price looked gravely concerned. I was willing to bet that, like me, he was imagining the nightmare scenario: women and children, entire families, trampling over that shell-torn range, exploring decrepit buildings that weren’t remotely safe.
‘The unexploded debris,’ he murmured. ‘Would they be so reckless?’
‘They would if my father assured them it was safe,’ said Albert. ‘He is the warden.’
‘But the casualties could be unimaginable . . .’
‘Which is exactly what Hartwell wants.’
‘Is he totally insane?’ Price exclaimed, overcome with alarm and, I thought, remorse. I couldn’t be sure, but I wondered if he now bitterly regretted abandoning the investigation – abandoning me – when he had.
‘A public tragedy,’ said Albert quietly. ‘It would seal the army’s fate and guarantee a public inquiry, which would probably lead to the eviction of soldiers from Imber. Forever.’
‘If you knew this, if it concerned you so, why didn’t you report it someone?’
‘Who? The range warden? The commander? Who would listen to the frenzied, preposterous claims of the ghost maker?’
There was only one answer to that.
‘Harry!’ I grabbed his arm. ‘We have to get back down there, warn the army. Make Hartwell and Sidewinder confess.’
‘We’ll have to prove it first.’ Price glared at Albert. ‘There’s one thing I don’t understand. How does Hartwell wield so much power over your father? You mentioned blackmail. Is it money? Or does Sidewinder have a secret he’ll do anything to protect – a secret Hartwell knows about? Whatever it is, it must be formidable. Otherwise why would your father – a serving member of the army – agree to help Hartwell in the first place? It can’t just be to pay for your prosthetics. There’s more to this tangled alliance, isn’t there?’
A silence. I shivered. I was desperate to get out of the cellar, to get Pierre up to the fresh air too, but there was no way we could leave now.
‘Albert?’ urged Price.
Of course, I know now that Price was correct: there was more. Much more. Another secret, the worst secret of all, about Imber and its evacuation. About what the military did, the action they sanctioned. But it wasn’t for our ears, not at that moment.
‘This is your fault,’ Price said threateningly, forgetting the gun trained on him. ‘The lives of innocent men and women and children could be at stake. Tell us what we need to know!’
‘If there is a secret,’ Albert shouted, ‘I don’t know what it is! Why do you think I brought both of you together? To investigate!’
Price stepped away, his fists clenched in anger and frustration. ‘Come, Sarah,’ he said, motioning towards the ladder. ‘We must go.’
The look on Price’s face at that moment, I have never forgotten. His eyes were brimming with sincerity and sorrow and a little shame, and I felt my heart ache for him a little, despite his neglectful and selfish behaviour. Would I have felt that way if I’d known what Price was still hiding from me? I doubt it.
‘Go,’ Albert said, gesturing to the ladder with his gun. ‘Leave me.’
He had a peculiar melancholy air about him.
‘Sarah.’
‘Just a moment, Harry.’
I went to Albert’s side, deeming it unsafe to leave him alone with his service revolver.
‘Let me have the gun, Albert.’
He flinched away from me.
‘I kept my side of the bargain – I listened to you. Now, please, give me the gun.’
Gently, he passed me the service revolver, and at the touch of the heavy, cold metal, I realised I had never held one before. I had never wanted to either.
Slowly, like a rite of faith, I knelt and placed the weapon gently on the ground behind me. Price wasted no time in snatching it up and slipping it into his pocket.
‘Now, let’s go,’ he said.
No time to lose!
Glass crunched under my feet as I made my way to the ladder. Then a second thought made me pause.
I turned to look back at the man who had created such chaos. An accessory to evil. With his head lowered, perhaps in shame, perhaps remorse, he was standing next to the magic lantern projector, gazing at its intricately carved winged skull.
‘I want it,’ I said. ‘The magic lantern.’
Albert’s hands curled at his sides, his mouth fell slightly open.
‘It’s evidence,’ I said in a firmer voice. ‘Give me the projector. The slides as well.’
Suddenly, all my fury at the cruelty and ill-treatment suffered by Pierre Hartwell surged up in me, obliterating any fear of the man who had done this. You might think that was brave of me, or even foolish, but honestly? It was easier to show that anger, now, knowing he wasn’t armed.
‘GIVE IT TO ME!’
Albert raised his gruesome face to me with slow purpose, but I didn’t see the acquiescence I’d hoped for. He looked desperate. And if we had learned anything back then from the Wall Street Crash of 1929, it was that desperation could drive the sanest men to madness. If desperation could make well-adjusted city workers throw themselves from buildings and put guns in their mouths, what could it do to a man who already believed he could summon ghosts with an antique projector and see the past, present and future in its lurid light displays?
‘You can’t have it,’ Albert said. ‘The phantasmagoria is my world.’
‘Your world just collided with another.’ My heart was hammering in my chest but I strained to imbue my voice with firm determination. ‘That magic lantern could prove useful in Imber, Albert. If you just allow me to—’
He leapt for the lantern, gripping it as if it was an object on which his life depended. Either the drugs or the lantern shifted your perspective too, I thought, remembering the warm place, the history of Imber in the mist. Albert was looking silently at me, as if he knew that I too had been influenced by the dark, mysterious machinations of this contraption.
‘Sarah?’ Price intervened from the bottom of the ladder. I saw from the resolve on his face that he had no intention of leaving me alone again. And I saw some
thing else, and it worried me. His hand was in the pocket in which he had placed the gun.
‘Let me handle this,’ I said firmly, then turned to the projectionist. I remembered what he had told us about his strange drawings and took a breath. ‘Albert, if there’s something you know, something connecting me with that village, then you have to tell me what it is.’
A long pause.
‘Be very careful,’ he said finally. ‘There are secrets in Imber that must be told. And very soon, you’re going to find out what they are.’
He glanced over my shoulder and I followed his gaze to the hammer with which Price had shattered the mirror. It lay discarded on the ground.
He’s going to pick it up, strike me with it.
I took a cautious step back, my hands curled into fists.
From behind me, Price called, ‘Sarah, hurry!’
And Albert spoke. ‘Why do you fear the village?’
The message accusing my father of murder came back to me . . . But that had been a hoax. I knew that. Yet in my mind’s eye, I saw Silas, the Imber blacksmith, chaining himself to the railings outside St Giles’ Church, saw him shrinking back, struggling, as rough hands forced him to the ground. Had that man been murdered by my father? How much did Albert know? He said he had experienced a premonition of this night, our confrontation in this cellar. Did that mean he also knew how it would end?
I heard myself saying, ‘I fear the village because of what my father may have done there.’
‘That’s not your fault,’ he said, nodding as if he understood the sentiment only too well. Then he looked at the hammer again.
I held my breath.
‘Sarah?’ Price was at my side.
I let out a long breath as Albert gently, reverently, nodded to the projector and told Price to take it. ‘There are secrets worse than any living horror in Imber. Find out what they are, Miss Grey.’ He bent, picked up the hammer and handed it to me. ‘Bring Hartwell and my father to justice.’
I took a final glance at the projectionist’s ruined face.
‘How did the planchette move during the séance? How did it spell out those messages? That name.’
He cocked his head in a way that suggested he didn’t understand.
‘At the mill,’ I clarified. ‘The spirit messages we received from the blacksmith. That was you, wasn’t it?’
No reply.
‘It had to be you. Somehow.’
Albert’s head remained cocked.
‘For God’s sake, Sarah,’ said Price, his hand now on my arm. ‘Hurry!’
I moved towards him, carrying the heavy hammer, then turned and locked eyes with Albert one final time.
Once I had started climbing the ladder, I didn’t dare look back.
– 32 –
MESSENGERS OF DECEPTION
With a rumble of the engine we were off, speeding through South London. Part of me wished I was driving; Price was one of those men who was born to be driven, which I suppose is a nice way of saying he should never have learned.
‘Harry, can you please slow down?’
‘How are you feeling?’
‘Hazy,’ I replied, as he swerved round a corner. But that was an understatement – my head was pounding. The Devil’s Snare was still playing havoc with me: one moment, I could vividly see the passing townhouses and parked cars, then their outlines would smudge and they would lose their colour. ‘Pierre?’ I turned round. ‘How are you feel—’
The boy was sleeping. Apparently peacefully, thank God. But his face was grey, he was shockingly thin, and the clusters of bruises on his arms were all too clear. ‘Should we take him to the hospital?’
Price kept his eyes on the road. ‘We have to get to Wiltshire, end this madness. We’ll stop on the way, get the boy something to eat.’ He gave me a sideways glance, curious. ‘You saw something down there, didn’t you? Something in the smoke?’
I considered telling Price about the peculiar visions: waiting in the sun beside the ancient Imber mill. Hallucinations, or something else? Perhaps it was a psychic emanation made possible by the Devil’s Snare. Or a hollow coincidence. But somehow I didn’t think so. These experiences felt like marvellous, meaningful coincidences. Price had a term for that sort of phenomenon, didn’t he? Synchronicity. I felt as though fate was poking me in the back, like everything was pointing to a deeper, more profound truth that I might uncover in Imber.
‘I did see something,’ I admitted. ‘And you don’t look surprised, Harry.’
‘Why should I be surprised when so much of this has happened before?’
‘What do you mean?’
He saw my alarmed face and rushed to explain. ‘Albert Sidewinder isn’t the first person to have pulled a stunt like that. In Revolutionary France, people were packing themselves into crypts to get the living daylights scared out of them by illusionists claiming to raise the dead. As for the phantasmagoria, you both got off lightly, I’d say.’
‘Oh?’
‘Well . . .’ He squinted at me, reconsidering. ‘Perhaps that’s a tad disingenuous of me, but two centuries ago, the phantasmagoria light shows in Germany were intense enough to drive their creator to a tragic end.’
That sounded melodramatic and implausible, and there was a time when I would have been cynical. I wasn’t now. Not when I remembered Albert below ground, clasping his service revolver with that dangerous, half-crazed expression. Thinking of the gruesome projector with its skull carving on the seat behind me, I asked Price more about this historical necromancer. ‘What did he do? What was his name?’
‘Johann Georg Schröpfer. Owned a coffee shop in Leipzig. Hosted séances, which he enhanced by using a magic lantern. Painted the ghastliest images – ghosts, corpses, demons – onto glass slides and projected them onto smoke.’
‘It sounds so crude.’
‘Well, it was. The technology was nothing compared to today’s. But Schröpfer accomplished all of this while practising and teaching witchcraft. I know it sounds absurd, but hats off to him – somehow he convinced his customers he really could converse with the dead.’
‘A bit like Sidewinder and Hartwell did with us, in Imber.’
Price nodded quickly, the strength in his features crumbling just for a moment.
‘People must have realised the images weren’t real,’ I said.
‘Sometimes.’ He looked at me briefly. ‘Mostly, the drugs threw their senses awry.’
The drugs. I exhaled heavily, remembering the grey smoke slipping into the dank chamber beneath the stage, remembering my visions of gruesome spectres, their movement and colour. Their sheer striking lucidity.
Having met many self-proclaimed psychics, I knew what they would say about my experience and the abject terror it had awakened within me. They would say I had glimpsed something of the clairvoyant’s world. But I did not want to consider that possibility, not even for a second.
I was committed now to knowing the truth. As if sensing my curiosity, Price rather suddenly said, ‘You know, Sarah, in ancient times, Native Americans would ingest Devil’s Snare to commune with deities through visions, to communicate via means of telepathy.’
‘Is that so?’
With a pang of nervousness, I swallowed hard. What if the Devil’s Snare had awakened some latent psychic ability, allowed my subconscious mind to reach back into the past? To connect with the physical surroundings of Imber.
Past, present and future.
If that was true, had the Devil’s Snare truly enabled Albert to see what was going to happen beneath the Brixton Picture House, to predict my involvement?
What if the drug had allowed my subconscious mind to access other possible realms of understanding? I checked that the plant extracts I had taken from the chamber were still safely sealed in the small paper bags in my coat pocket. They were.
; ‘Harry, I know you try to be as scientific as you can, but is there the slightest possibility Schröpfer was communing with the dead? Any possibility that the drugs did awaken in him some sort of extra-sensory perception?’
Price’s expression said it all: cold, hard cynicism.
‘And what sort of tragedy befell Schröpfer?’
‘What do you think?’
‘He became undone?’
Price nodded, turning our car onto Kennington Road. ‘All those nights of trying to wake the dead, smoky ghosts floating about the room, inhaling drugs like Devil’s Snare – eventually it drove him to suicide.’
‘How did he . . .’
‘Torched himself. Set himself ablaze, before a live audience.’
‘Like Sergeant Edwards!’ I said, aghast. ‘He was at the mill; he was exposed to the drugs. Do you think it worked a similar effect on him?’
Price nodded, but I sensed he had left something vital unsaid, and I wondered if it was something about Schröpfer. It was, although I wouldn’t discover exactly what for many decades, certainly not until after Price was dead, and by then it would all be said and done.
‘Don’t agonise, Sarah. Your exposure to the Devil’s Snare explains your disorientation.’
Perhaps that was right. Did it also account for the paranoia holding me in its grip? As we drove through London on that late evening, the city felt both unfamiliar and threatening, a city of hidden squares and mysterious arches; a city whose gated gardens and ancient cemeteries were never to be entered alone. A city of secrets.
‘Harry, why didn’t you tell me the projectionist brought us together?’
‘Well . . . I couldn’t be sure.’
There was that evasive tone again. I noticed that the expression in his eyes had hardened.
‘You’ve had a long, quiet interest in Imber, haven’t you?’
He didn’t deny it, which worried me.
‘Why?’
After a long pause he said, ‘I’m afraid, very afraid. I’m afraid something wicked occurred in that village, Sarah. Something tragic. In time, I feel sure the answers will surface, but for now, my instinct says the less you know, the better.’