Table of Contents
Half-title Page
Title Page
Copyright
Contents
1 Release
2 The Manor House
3 The Pocket Watch
4 Ravishment
5 Confrontation
6 An Argument
7 The Meeting
8 Decision
9 Rat Poison
10 The Notes
11 Arsenic
12 The Party
13 Hypnosis
14 The Perpetration
15 A Death
16 The Deal
17 Spectre
18 The Missing Body
19 The Astonishment
20 Fire
21 Aftermath
Thirteen Years Later
22 Thimriddy Fair
23 The Question
24 A Fight
25 Mr Badger
26 Shocking News
27 Fog
28 Queenie
29 The Breakdown
30 A Dream
31 Possession
32 The Nurse
33 Departure
34 Abergail
35 Pump and Gristle
36 The Confectionery Shop
37 The Canal
38 The Pistol
39 Discovery
40 Molestation
41 An Arrest
42 Insects
43 The Butcher
44 The Chase
45 The Church
46 Crypts
47 Finale
THE UNUSUAL POSSESSION
OF ALASTAIR STUBB
First published in Great Britain in 2015 by Urbane Publications Ltd
Suite 3, Brown Europe House, 33/34 Gleamingwood Drive,
Chatham, Kent ME5 8RZ
Copyright © David John Griffin, 2015
The moral right of David John Griffin to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
All characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is purely coincidental.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978-1-910692-34-9
EPUB 978-1-910692-35-6
MOBI 978-1-910692-37-0
Cover design by David John Griffin
Text design & typeset by Julie Martin
urbanepublications.com
The publisher supports the Forest Stewardship Council® (FSC®), the leading international forest-certification organisation. This book is made from acid-free paper from an FSC®-certified provider. FSC is the only forest-certification scheme supported by the leading environmental organisations, including Greenpeace.
To my wife Susan, my sister Maria,
and my friend Mike
Contents
1
RELEASE
2
THE MANOR HOUSE
3
THE POCKET WATCH
4
RAVISHMENT
5
CONFRONTATION
6
AN ARGUMENT
7
THE MEETING
8
DECISION
9
RAT POISON
10
THE NOTES
11
ARSENIC
12
THE PARTY
13
HYPNOSIS
14
THE PERPETRATION
15
A DEATH
16
THE DEAL
17
SPECTRE
18
THE MISSING BODY
19
THE ASTONISHMENT
20
FIRE
21
AFTERMATH
Thirteen Years Later
22
THIMRIDDY FAIR
23
THE QUESTION
24
A FIGHT
25
MR BADGER
26
SHOCKING NEWS
27
FOG
28
QUEENIE
29
THE BREAKDOWN
30
A DREAM
31
POSSESSION
32
THE NURSE
33
DEPARTURE
34
ABERGAIL
35
PUMP AND GRISTLE
36
THE CONFECTIONERY SHOP
37
THE CANAL
38
THE PISTOL
39
DISCOVERY
40
MOLESTATION
41
AN ARREST
42
INSECTS
43
THE BUTCHER
44
THE CHASE
45
THE CHURCH
46
CRYPTS
47
FINALE
CHAPTER 1
Release
ELEANOR STUBB, TRAPPED in a wakeful delirium and speaking strangely, had been taken to The Grinding Sanatorium for the Delusional. For Eleanor, the doctors and nurses were phantom jailers. Only insects inhabiting dark places were real, all other living creatures seen as dream imaginings, coloured shadows cast onto an equally shadowy world.
But after twelve months of confinement, there were less quizzical expressions and shaking heads from those who kept her under lock and key.
‘I admit, no longer will I be known as The Queen nor talk with insects. The magnificent castle has vanished, along with my numerous servants,’ Eleanor had said.
This had been a turning point, a change in her fortunes. By simply telling untruths, as she considered them to be, their interrogations lessened. Most of the vapour shadows became solid and real again. Sometimes even, the staff allowed the window shutters in her room to be closed during the day, for her to commune with candlelight in the mysterious darkness, to seek the hiding place of her beloved offspring Alastair. And when Eleanor had convinced the medical staff of her recovery they decided she could leave the musty sanatorium.
Today, a nurse had thrown back those wooden shutters from the room’s bay windows. The bright morning sun danced within, highlighting irrelevance – the handle of her hairbrush was glinting, as well as the basin tap by the dressing table.
A breeze, drifting lightly through the open windows, brushed the warmth from her poised face. Eleanor was excited at the prospect of going home with her husband William; convinced she would find, at last, her dear son Alastair.
Her refined lips smiled back from an oval mirror. The straight, mahogany hair tied in a coiled bun, those wide eyes, a white-skinned face unblemished by makeup, and an attractive demeanour, all belonged to that young woman from the other side. Each time the visitor from the opposite dimension stood in a reflected replica of Eleanor’s own surroundings, she tried to convince Eleanor they were the same woman. Yet the more this stranger pleasantly smiled from behind the mirror’s smooth surface, the more Eleanor became perplexed. How could there be any connection with this unknown person; why should there be any true relationship with the duplicate’s imitation realm?
Eleanor had often contemplated the elegance of this
opposite. But when encouraged by the reflection to compare further she always turned away, often adjusting her double’s bodice or sleeve by adjusting her own. She could never appreciate her beauty and sensual disposition, unknowingly sending waves of charm and enticement to men of all types. They desired her, easily captivated and tempted by her unwitting attraction.
She went to the foot of the bed and after touching the lid of her suitcase as though with affection, peered at the neatly trimmed lawns outside. A red admiral butterfly alighted on the windowsill. Eleanor nodded towards it, as if passing on some telepathic message, then shook her head knowingly. This particular messenger had appeared too quickly – it did not exist. There must be no communication with a mere mind fragment, she told herself.
“There is one success in being cured. But there is another success in knowing you are cured, do you understand?”
She had understood, uplifted and refreshed, cleansed even, a whole person once more. Now her perceptions were correct. No longer did she need to build to see, or dissect to know. All just was, existing without internal aid. It was easy: the remaining vapour ghosts were disguised servants who simply needed to be told what they wanted to hear. She was Queen Eleanor of a lost domain in secret; and the darkness cloaked her child, wrapping her son Alastair in velvet protection, in preparation for reunion with him. If she tipped her head and listened intently, she heard insect preparers scuttling and tapping.
She awaited the arrival of her husband, eagerness tempered with patience – he had been due to arrive more than two hours ago.
William Stubb quickened his step with the gravel drive crackling beneath his boots. He waved away a bothersome fly skittering in front of him and looked up. The impressive sanatorium dominated ahead in the morning’s pleasant sunshine. The building stood, resolutely solid, as if hewn from a single, huge mass of stone, as though concrete tentacles under it clutched the earth like tree roots would. Poplar and cypress grew to such heights that they peered over its roofs. Strange turrets and crooked chimneys broke the tile stretches there, with areas of brickwork beneath friable and decaying. Along the frontage stood tall fluted pillars and behind these were five doors, the largest one opening quickly. Four men, dressed in black, slid out. They moved carefully, each man bearing the corner of an oak coffin on his shoulder.
Wide steps curved up to the terrace; running the length of each side was a balustrade topping arabesque balusters. Conifers and exotic shrubs adorned each flank.
The pall-bearers came down the stone stairway with care, trying their best to avoid the sanatorium patients who were slumped on the bottom step. They manoeuvred their load towards a dark blue hearse sitting glumly to the side with its shafts attached to a snorting horse, the animal’s bulky weight shifting on the gravel. The back of the hearse gaped open, ready to accept its mortal offering.
Though Stubb was a fair distance from the group, already he could read the words painted on the side of the vehicle, each letter larger than formality should allow: Nuckle’s Funeral Parlour.
Some varieties of mind might have translated the morticians’ activity as an omen, a message of portent even, but not William Stubb. His imagination had solidified years before and was incapable of buoyant meandering. Still he felt uneasy: he guessed that the very casket being loaded into the hearse was of his own making, maybe one of the last assemblages he had meticulously crafted. If he were to pull out the nails with pliers and lift the substantial lid – ignoring the rigid corpse within – tear the silk and padding around its sides, to leave the toffee-like bitumen to be scraped away, he might find his own monogram and a date carefully chiseled into the base of it.
How was he to explain to Eleanor that the mainstay of family life had begun to crumble shortly after her confinement? And now, upon her release, had finally disintegrated? His services were no longer required at Terps Joinery, Cabinetmakers to the Trade. All savings had gone. The house had been lost shortly after his redundancy, along with the major portion of his dignity.
An urgent voice snapped the quietness. ‘Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait!’ The white-haired Mr. Nuckle had trapped his fingers under the heavy coffin. ‘Idiots – fools!’ he cried out and then howled as he extricated the pulsing digits, tears forming behind his spectacles.
Stubb was nearing the commotion. ‘Nuckle, want a hand?’ he shouted over and gave a hollow laugh.
Mr. Nuckle strode around to the side of the carriage and gripped one of the brass lanterns mounted on its side.
‘Do I know you? If not, you’ve no business with ours, so would advise you to walk away. Good day, sir.’
His fellow pall-bearers, nodding in agreement as though their heads were mounted on springs, muttered in stifled tones.
‘You don’t know me, but I know you,’ said Stubb quietly.
A year before, Nuckle had found another supplier of caskets in the town of Smudge, forcing Stubb’s village employer to sack many of his staff, William Stubb included.
‘What did he say?’ Mr. Nuckle asked one of his employees, who shrugged and was attentive to the casket in the back of the hearse. ‘You said what?’ he continued with a raised voice, massaging his bruised fingers. ‘I recommend you keep opinions to yourself. We’ll all be happy.’
The sturdy brown horse decided to shake its reins and the wooden wheels of the hearse creaked.
Stubb grimaced, and scratched one of his bushy sideburns. ‘Go back to binding sheaves, you fraudster.’
Mr. Nuckle’s white curls of hair wobbled as he shook his squarish head while holding an arm of his spectacles.
‘What does he mean?’ he said, his white eyebrows knitting.
His helpers pretended ignorance. Most of the villagers in Muchmarsh knew of the remarkable similarity of the funeral parlour owner with Mr. Badger, the farm hand, who worked for farmer Solomon.
Unsure as to the meaning of the insult, Mr. Nuckle bellowed back, ‘I insist you go away or I shall be forced to … dump horse produce on your person, or some such.’
‘Is that right?’ Stubb replied, taking up an aggressive stance. But then, slapping a palm through sultry air, he added, ‘Forget it, I can’t be bothered.’
As though by some divine link, with the switches of their brains tripping precisely at the same time, the two patients who lounged at the bottom of the worn steps began to rock from side to side with exaggerated movements. A third man, dressed in a white gown, ambling past aided by a nurse, shrugged off his helper. He proceeded to wave his spindly arms, counting beats with an invisible baton as if a conductor fronting an orchestra. He turned his attention to a hot air balloon floating above the virescent trees. The basket beneath the scarlet bulb held its traveller, seen as a spot of turquoise. With the gaping-mouthed patient diverted from his previous task of conducting an ensemble of two, the nurse took the opportunity to grasp his bony elbow. She led him away, the man’s nose still aimed at the aerial globe.
Perhaps he had projected his entity, his affliction and personality to the passenger of that flying device and was, at that moment, peering down from amongst light cloud in a cyan sky to the grounds of the sanatorium. He would be seeing the noseless statues standing guard over the urns cupping their massed flowers, and the apple trees in blossom – white dots on the dominoes of grass; the artistic inmate – there to cure his obsession of carving statuettes from the chalk found in ditches – frantically scratching at the soil beside the west wall. The balloon passenger as patient would also be espying the hearse with its attendants, two figures sat nearby, with himself looking skyward. And another figure, marching briskly up to the crumbling stone steps before climbing the stairway that led to the sanatorium main entrance.
The ominous building swallowed Stubb, leaving those agitated convalescents and the gentlemen in black to swear and jostle. After inquiring about his wife, Stubb was shown to a high-ceilinged corridor leading from the side of the grand hallway. Then to a room, plainly decorated except for a watercolour of Grinding Mills on one of its stipple
d walls. He sat on a plain chair with his gullet made of sand; he longed for a drink. A fresh and cold pint of Tanman’s Quirly Ale would suffice…
He stood expectantly as a dull resonance reached his large ears. A figure, wearing a dressing gown and tapping an iron-tipped walking stick, shuffled past the doorway. The hobbling woman grinned foolishly to the wall coving above Stubb’s head. ‘Small town, nice place,’ she bleated. Stubb ignored her, pursed his lips and sat again. If only the sanatorium staff would take him quickly to his wife, then he could leave this dismal abode with its strange echoes, and odours of urine and polish.
Stubb had much to tell Eleanor but when attempting to access the catalogue of the past year’s events from his mind, he realized that much of what had happened had been swallowed, the memories somehow erased. All except one: he was prepared to admit that the house was no longer theirs, now belonging to strangers. That from today, Eleanor’s new home would be his father’s manor house in Muchmarsh. ‘I’m going to find work again,’ William Stubb needed to say. ‘A fresh start for us as man and wife. Try for a family again.’
‘Good morning,’ said Eleanor, somewhat formally, as she stood by the framed watercolour, a white-coated doctor smiling behind her and a porter there also, holding her maroon suitcase. ‘Have you brought Alastair with you; has he emerged from the darkness?’
Stubb gasped while the doctor looked surprised. All concerned believed Eleanor to be cured, finally released from her demons and delusions.
‘Eleanor my love, you are free to go, today. We brought you here to take away those wrong thoughts, remember? We’ve spoken about this: our son is buried in the family church crypt. It’s a tragedy for us but we have no living child called Alastair.’
The Unusual Possession of Alastair Stubb Page 1