The Lost Village

by Neil Spring

  ‘He’s been lying to you, Sarah.’

  Feeling afraid, so awfully afraid, I shot Price a worried look, searching his face for any vestige of honesty. ‘Harry?’

  His eyes remained riveted on the chalky grassland.

  ‘He’s been treating you like an experiment. Bringing you here to Imber. Observing your reactions. Studying you. Testing your memories. Memories he extracted from you under hypnosis. Memories he deliberately kept secret.’

  But that couldn’t be. I’d told Price I wasn’t sure about the hypnosis; that I wasn’t comfortable with the idea of dragging up old memories of my father, whom I missed so badly; that I was afraid of the idea of going into a trance, of not being in control. Hadn’t I read somewhere that hypnosis could be used as a form of mind control? But Price assured me he was simply going to help me relax by inducing what he called ‘an altered state of consciousness’. What could go wrong?

  ‘Harry, this can’t be right. Can it?’

  With characteristic ambiguity, Price raised his head, put a hand to my cheek and said gravely, ‘I should have you arrested.’

  ‘Arrested?’

  ‘I’m talking to that scoundrel journalist who broke into my office.’

  He turned furiously on Wall, raising his fists.

  ‘Harry, stop! It was me, all right? I asked Vernon to break into your laboratory!’

  Price froze. Dropped his fists. Turned to face me, stunned. When he finally did speak, it was to Vernon.

  ‘Stay away from me, understand? Stay the hell away from us both.’

  I know now, of course, what I shared with Harry Price under hypnosis. Price kept a meticulous record of the memories, long buried, now uncovered. And, of course, I still have the papers. Looking back over them still makes me anxious, makes me sick with betrayal.

  HP: What year is it?

  SG: 1880.

  HP: Tell me, what is your name?

  SG: Alice.

  HP: All right. How old are you, Alice?

  SG: Twelve.

  HP: Where do you live?

  SG: I live here.

  HP: Where is here?

  SG: Imber. We live in the big house.

  HP: Imber Court?

  SG: Yes. But now I’m walking through Carrion Pit Lane.

  HP: Where are you going?

  SG: [Quietly, almost mumbling] I’m at the chalk pit. Walking around it. Hurrying.

  HP: Yes, but what is your destination?

  SG: I’m going to the mill.

  HP: Why? What’s there?

  SG: That’s where we agreed to meet.

  But on that cold, wet afternoon in Imber, I knew nothing of this conversation. Thunder rumbled close by. The rain was coming down harder, the ground softening to thick, sucking mud.

  ‘Harry?’ I whispered. ‘What’s going on? Have you been lying to me?’

  Price nodded, and his whole body sagged, as though that admission had ripped out his heart. ‘Sarah, there’s a memory you’ve been carrying now for so long – since before you arrived in Imber, since that night at the picture house in Brixton, and even before that . . .’

  ‘What memory?’

  ‘Your memory of the warm place. The mill wheel turning. Waiting. You were here, Sarah, in 1880.’

  ‘This is utterly absurd, even for you, Harry. I wasn’t even born in 1880!’

  He nodded weightily, as if he too were perturbed by this idea, and somehow that made me feel worse.

  ‘I’ve heard many people speak of past lives, previous incarnations, but always in the vaguest, most unverifiable ways. But under hypnosis, your descriptions of this village, the life you led here as a little girl, were so precise, so vivid, I had to know the truth . . .

  ‘Remember you said you felt as though you had been to this village before, that you were pulled here? That was because of these memories, long buried, surfacing. You even knew the layout of Imber Court. You knew about the secret room. Why? Because you lived there. In another time. In another life.’

  Hearing this made me feel vulnerable. Scared and defenceless. And yet, it made sense.

  I said, wonderingly, ‘I remember the warm place. Waiting for someone.’

  Nodding, Price held my eyes as the obvious question came to me.

  ‘Who was I waiting for?’

  Price turned and looked at Vernon with an expression of grim expectation, and in return Vernon handed him Marie Hartwell’s drawings. Slowly, Price unrolled the papers and I forced myself to look. I saw a girl, maybe twelve years of age. She was wearing an expensive dress, her hair curling around her ears. The little girl whose image was timelessly preserved on the magic lantern slide I had found at the picture house in Brixton.

  ‘Who is she?’ I asked.

  Price’s face was tense with the weight of the revelation he was about to make. ‘She’s you.’

  – 39 –

  AN OLD SOUL

  ‘This girl is you, Sarah, in a previous life. She’s Hartwell’s older sister. And Sarah, I’m sorry . . . she was murdered.’

  The shock struck me like lightning, and I remembered his words to me inside Imber Court: ‘There’s one more, Sarah. One more little girl, who should have lived.’

  For a long moment, all I could do was stare at him. My whole body began to tremble with anger and fear. ‘I don’t believe it,’ I said, in little more than a whisper. Although my logical brain was already calling me to doubt, why did this feel like a moment of cold understanding, disturbingly accurate?

  ‘You kept this from me?’ I asked Price, my voice cracking. ‘Harry, you’re a monster!’

  ‘A monster? No. Can’t you see I was trying to protect you?’

  Without even thinking, I slapped him hard across the face. And then, when he didn’t react, I felt an intense rage sweep through me.

  ‘PROTECT ME? Is that what you were doing when I collapsed when we arrived here? When I insisted there was a mystery here and you pretended not to see it? You knew everything.’

  ‘That’s not true. I didn’t know whether the memories were real. I assumed you had subconsciously gleaned information about this village, its history.’

  I jabbed a finger in his face. ‘You deceived me.’

  ‘Sarah, please, I only wanted to verify what was real and what was not. False memory syndrome is a common phenomenon – one even I don’t understand.’

  ‘So you thought you’d use me as your own little secret experiment?’ I glared at him, remembering how, during our investigation, he had stared at me, scrutinised me.

  He didn’t answer; I didn’t give him a chance to speak. I was incensed, ranting. ‘What else have you lied about? The picture palace! You did follow me there! You knew there was something within that building drawing me in, some psychic bond between me and Albert and the projection slide with . . . with me on it?’

  Price was shaking his head adamantly.

  ‘What did I tell you under hypnosis? If Hartwell killed his sister – me – how did it happen?’

  He was looking away from me, past the church, towards the burning house, and I saw then that my worst suspicions were true.

  ‘You’re a pathetic excuse for a man, Harry. My life would have been so much better without—’

  Before I knew what was happening, he grabbed my wrist. ‘You really want to see? Well, look. Look there!’

  At his direction, I looked towards the rusty mill wheel. Something triggered.

  A swirl of white light exploded in my head. Ripping me from the scene.

  All around me, a warm breeze stirs the grass as, in the distance, the orange sun sinks over the chalky downs to the horizon. I see a boy with shaggy black hair.

  It’s him, of course: my brother, Oscar. He’s smiling, pleased I’ve kept my promise to meet him here. He takes my hand, tells me not to be afr
aid – and why should I be? We’re going to play in the mill, and perhaps later we will milk the cows together.

  He snaps my wrist.

  The pain rips up my arm as he grapples me to the floor. I’m crying. Screaming.

  ‘Father says it has to be like this.’ His voice is unfamiliar, cold. ‘Father has shown me how.’

  ‘Help me! Please, someone help me!’

  My legs are kicking wildly, my whole body bucking against him as he climbs on top of me, using his legs to pin my arms to the ground. We used to play a game like this. His hands are around my throat. Squeezing.

  Then one hand comes free and moves down, reaching for something.

  And suddenly, pain slides into me.

  I open my mouth, but no words come. Just a ragged cough. And then hot blood.

  He raises his arm. The blade glints in the last rays of the sun. Dripping red.

  ‘Oscar, please, what are you doing?’

  The blade slices into me again. As my insides spasm, I look down to see the spreading crimson stain, and then . . . nothing.

  Just black.

  – 40 –

  IMBER FOREVER

  October 1978

  ‘Miss Grey?’

  My eyes snap open. Pierre’s voice has pulled me into the present, into the cold late afternoon in Imber’s churchyard. From under the brim of his hat, he looks across the barren valley towards Imber Court, then searches my face. There’s such a vulnerability to this man, an undercurrent of sadness from his childhood that is almost too painful to behold.

  I apologise. ‘I disappeared, didn’t I? Blanked out.’

  He nods, smiling softly, as if to say, Don’t worry about it. But I do worry. I feel embarrassed and old. What must this man think of my incredible story?

  Does he believe it? Would anyone?

  ‘So,’ he says, quietly. Warily. ‘You’re saying Price concealed evidence that suggested you were Hartwell’s sister, in another existence . . . another time?’

  I give a sorrowful nod.

  Pierre looks doubtful – not exactly cynical, but I see the questions in his eyes. Did I acquire the memories from somewhere else? Was my past life, my death, more rationally understood as a narrative invented by my subconscious mind? It had to be possible. Not only had I visited Imber as a young girl, but I had also unwittingly witnessed Oscar and Marie Hartwell laying to rest one of their young. Had my own childhood memories become mixed up with fantasy?

  Perhaps, but . . .

  ‘You believe it, don’t you, Sarah?’

  I lean wearily against a tree, looking out over the expanse of Salisbury Plain. ‘You know, the moment I set foot here, I hated it. It was as if I had been here before. Now, maybe, I know why. Perhaps I am exactly what your mother said – an old soul.’

  It explains so much, like why I felt I knew this place, especially the patch of ground between the chalk pit and the abandoned mill. The patch of ground where the police tent is erected.

  Now Pierre’s eyes are sad and curious. ‘Did you ever go back to work for Harry?’

  I hesitate, unsure whether to tell him. Sometimes when we see our mistakes, it’s easier to pretend they never happened. It is hard to say yes, even harder to look him in the eye. I’m afraid of the disapproval he might show me.

  ‘Harry Price devoted his whole life to the study of alleged abnormal phenomena, to protecting the public from fraudulent mediums who preyed on innocents like my own mother. A maverick? Yes. An egomaniac? Yes. Manipulative? Of course. But in those days, you couldn’t breathe the word supernatural without hearing his name. Pierre, he was famous! His masses of correspondence, the thousands of books he kept on a subject that most scientists scorned – all of this meant that after Imber, Harry represented the best chance I had of finding the answers I needed.’

  ‘And did you?’

  I consider the question carefully, remembering the horrors that followed the Imber case – horrors that eventually led to Price’s death. I sigh deeply. ‘What choice did I have? I was—’

  ‘In love with him?’

  I give a helpless, acquiescent shrug. Pierre nods. There are no words. He gives me a moment to wipe my eyes, then casts a glance towards the lane, which I know leads into the woods.

  To the tent the police have erected over the human remains.

  ‘The police said you insisted on seeing. You’re sure you want to see?’

  I’m not sure. The prospect of going anywhere near that tent is as upsetting as the thought of stepping up to your most cherished friend’s grave. But I’ve come this far.

  I introduce myself to the young policewoman standing guard outside the tent. The PC may not believe what I have come to tell her, but she is expecting me, which is why, after checking my identification, she unzips the tent door and escorts us inside.

  The air is mouldy and damp. Laid out on the ground is the body bag. Without uttering a word, I kneel beside that black rubberised fabric and watch as the policewoman unzips the bag. Slowly. Respectfully.

  Pierre turns his head sharply, averting his eyes, but I force myself to look at the skeleton. Blackened. Crumpled. I don’t look at the skull, I look at the hands. No, where the hands should be – they have been severed at the wrist. And the world begins swirling.

  ‘Miss?’ asks the policewoman.

  ‘Her hands were cut off and buried separately. Probably to make it harder to identify her.’

  ‘You know who she is? Miss?’

  Shakily, struck with anguish, I rise to my feet. It’s an effort to voice my thoughts, but after a few long moments I’m relieved when the words come. ‘She was his sister. He throttled her with his bare hands before putting a knife in her heart.’

  ‘Who did?’ I hear the confusion in the policewoman’s voice.

  ‘Oscar Hartwell. He murdered his three little girls. But this murder was his first. He was just a boy. Ten years old. That was during the summer of 1880.’

  The policewoman looks dubiously at me. ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Because I was there.’

  She frowns. She doesn’t understand. And who can blame her?

  I roll up my sleeves. Pierre stares at the distinct birthmarks on both of my wrists. ‘Sarah? Oh my God . . .’

  I give him a sad, knowing smile. The policewoman looks more confused than ever. Oh, she has her questions, but what I need most right now is fresh air, so I smile and apologise. And as I step out of the tent with Pierre, I deliberately neglect to mention my other birthmark.

  The slightly curved birthmark on my chest, just above my heart.

  *

  Ever the gentleman, Pierre walks with me back towards the top of Carrion Pit Lane. The shadows are lengthening, and there is a moment of pure calm. The sky over Salisbury Plain stretches forever. From the top of the valley, Pierre and I gaze down upon Imber Court, a charred ruin.

  ‘Her name was Alice.’ The words puff from my lips in a white cloud. ‘Alice Hartwell.’ It is of course the name that Price’s spectre whispered to me, just one week ago. ‘She was Oscar’s older sister, and, who knows, if she had lived, that hell house might have passed to her.’

  Pierre presses his fingertips against the corners of his eyes. ‘Now it belongs to the army. And like everything else in this village, it always will.’

  I think about that in the dying light, surveying the shell-pitted cottages, the desolate roads, the barbed-wire fences and the churchyard with its slanting gravestones. I think of the manipulation, the entrapment and the black misery here, all emanating from two men – two depraved men – and I wonder whether Imber’s spectres still return here.

  Softly, I say, ‘I think this village will forever belong to the people of Imber. Whether it’s returned to them or not. I hope so.’

  ‘What else do you hope for, Sarah?’

  Remembering the
leaning gravestone dressed in ivy in the churchyard in Pulborough, I revive my spirits by telling Pierre I hope I wasn’t just an experiment to Price. It’s easier to believe he was trying to protect me by not telling me the truth.

  Somewhere out there, if he’s listening and watching, I hope Harry Price has forgiven me, and understands why his old friend broke her promise.

  On my saddest days, I think with sorrow of my son, and I hope he is happy and healthy. Not haunted, not driven like his parents to see beyond the veil.

  I hope that if the dead are speaking, someone is listening.

  Pierre smiles. And then we hear it. From the direction of the churchyard comes the slow and steady tolling of bells, and something else, a harsher sound, like a hammer striking metal.

  Pierre’s mouth falls open.

  ‘Not everything dies,’ I whisper, watching the words carry on my breath to disperse in the chill air.

  ‘I have something for you,’ I say to Pierre, as the church bells continue their mournful toll. ‘Something I’ve written: your story and mine.’

  The story of a lost boy and a lost village.

  The story of the village where I died.

  Acknowledgements

  No book is written in isolation. I owe a debt of gratitude to my agents at Curtis Brown, Luke Speed and the wonderful Cathryn Summerhayes, and to the fantastic team at Quercus for their confidence and support. Special thanks to my editor, Kathryn Taussig; my copyeditor, Julie Fergusson; my publicist, Alainna Hadjigeorgiou; and Quercus’s Managing Director, Jon Butler.

  When my debut novel, The Ghost Hunters, was adapted into a one-off television film for ITV (Harry Price: Ghost Hunter), it was Quercus who suggested that readers and audiences alike would be excited to read more about the adventures of the enigmatic Harry Price and his intrepid assistant, Sarah Grey. It struck me, at once, as an irresistible proposition.

  Harry Price was a real psychical investigator; a maverick who achieved infamy during the inter-war period for his other-worldly investigations, and although this story is entirely imaginary, some of it was inspired by Price’s own writings and experiences. For example, there was a ‘spirit child’ that convinced Price, for a time, of the existence of an afterlife. Of all his investigations, ‘Rosalie’ is one of the most controversial, and anyone seeking information on the case should consult Paul Adams’ book on this enduring mystery.