by Nick Brown
“The truth is I need to get away from here for a bit. I feel, not haunted obviously, this is the twenty-first century, more like someone’s after me. I need a change of scene. Have a good Christmas, Giles, and watch out for yourself.”
He stood up, looked behind once more and scurried for the exit; Giles settled the bill and walked back to the Unit. The occasional light shining amongst dark windows in the silent Neo-Gothic quad made the place appear all the more deserted, emphasising the number of empty rooms. The Unit’s offices felt unnaturally sepulchral and the small sounds Giles made as he finished his work seemed to resonate with a volume they didn’t deserve. He left Sophie’s fibre optic tree turned on in an attempt to make the atmosphere more cheerful but the small light it shed in such a large space only increased the melancholy.
He hurriedly finished and decided Tim Thompson’s note could wait until after Christmas. He’d had enough of the macabre so began to shut down the computers and turn off the lights. It was as he was about to turn off the Christmas tree that he heard the footsteps. They were echoing along the outside corridor but stopped at the door. He watched in horror as the latch began to rise and door opened.
His heart nearly stopped with fright when he saw what came through the door. The macabre figure could have been the long dead Jacob Marley: it was no less disturbing.
Steve, backlit by the fluorescent lights of the corridor looked like something fresh out of Hell. His long hair was cropped to stubble, his face attenuated and angular. The mutilated ear was bandaged and the pale papery skin sat well with the grotesque white stubble on his head. His face was a ghastly sight: lined and anxious. Giles couldn’t suppress the thought that Steve would no longer be so attractive to women.
“Steve, for Christ’s sake, you almost gave me a heart attack, what are you doing here, you should be in hospital?”
“Got nowhere else. I hoped I’d find you here, Gi, I couldn’t hack it any longer in hospital, waiting for that horror to find me like I know it would; I’m unfinished business. I should be dead and I’m not sure that wouldn’t have been better. Rose and Leonie were right, and the witch and the vicar. Even you, Gi, even you got it eventually. Oh Christ what’s happening?”
He moved to the nearest chair, Sophie’s, and slumped on the desk, his nightmare face incongruously lit by the soft twinkling lights of the tree.
Giles, moved by a sympathetic impulse, went and stood behind the chair and gently placed his hands on Steve’s shoulders, which, to Giles’s embarrassment, but not surprise, began to shake. The sobs seemed to start at his shoulders and for a few moments they remained stuck in the pose. Giles gently massaging his shoulders and Steve quietly weeping.
“I’ve seen things, sensed things, that no one’s meant to and there’s no way back now; I’m broken: I feel broken and nothing’s ever going to put me back together. Every time I close my eyes I’m back on the tomb and it’s cold, so cold I can’t feel my fingers. My teeth and bones shake and there’s something unspeakably foul in there and it’s about to reach out and touch me and I know that if it does I’m lost; lost and damned.”
He paused wracked by a spasm, coughing and sobbing. Giles continued to stroke his back, the way he would a frightened puppy. Slowly Steve regained sufficient control to blow his nose and wipe his eyes with a filthy handkerchief and after a pause that seemed an age, he started to speak again.
“I can’t stand the idea of going back in there but all I can think is that having caused all this by opening the tomb we have to find a way of closing it. So I discharged myself and came to look for you because if anyone is more to blame for this than me, it’s you.”
“Thanks, Steve; might not be as much a forlorn hope as you think. Listen, you look like shit. I’ll make you a drink; your clothes are filthy and you stink. When did you last eat?”
“I don’t remember, I don’t want to eat, I don’t think I can.”
Giles made him drink some coffee and tried to patch him into what was happening. They sat close together at the desk illuminated by the fibre optic tree until after six by which time Steve was calmer.
“Come on, I’ll drive you to your place to pick up some clothes and then you can stay with us while we work out what to do.”
“Us?”
“Yeah, I forgot to tell you, I’ve temporarily moved in with the witch, even the vicar doesn’t seem too bad now and there’s weirder ones hanging about; should make you feel at home. But you’ll be surprised to know you’ve another option.”
He handed him Jan’s address in Glasgow and passed on her message.
“I think maybe later on I’d like that, but first I have to come with you because there can be no peace until this is finished.”
Giles ushered him out of the office and turned to lock the door, casting a final glance at the large cavernous space dark except for the twinkling blue, green and red lights of the Christmas tree on Sophie’s desk.
CHAPTER 28
THE VIEW FROM ROOM ONE7B
Hospital manager Jenny Dawlish had a problem she didn’t know how to solve. None of the ward staff would attend the patient in room One7B. The room was the most remote from all other wards in the hospital. It had to be; the complaints from the wards, staff and patients, even visitors, had been bad enough but once a number of patients began to experience inexplicable rapid deterioration in their medical condition something needed to be done.
Morale in hospital wards, although never particularly high, has an effect on recovery times. The decline in morale and deterioration of patients was most marked in wards closest to where Lisa Richardson was confined.
At first it had been a series of complaints about rapid changes in temperature on the wards, and of things patients claimed to see that shouldn’t be there. The heating system in the hospital had always been erratic and imaginings, morbid fears and shifts of perspective are common enough among the unwell, particularly those in hospital. An elderly woman recovering from a minor operation in the women’s ward at the end of the corridor leading to Lisa’s room claimed a nurse she didn’t know had tried to pull out her stitches in the night.
The stitches had been disturbed and there was fresh bleeding. The doctor on his ward round said it was merely the consequence of a disturbed night and prescribed a mild sedative. When her son visited in the evening she pleaded with him to discharge her and take her home. The ward nurse spoke to the duty doctor who persuaded the son to make his mother stay. After the son left for home she became disturbed and began to tell the other patients about the weird nurse who visited her in the night. Fear began to spread. Ward staff moved her into a separate side room nearest to the corridor.
But the noises she made were still audible and they weren’t pleasant. That night she was given a much stronger sedative. But the cries and screams continued into the early hours and none of the night staff enjoyed their rounds. In the morning she was pale, weak and wouldn’t wake up. That evening, when her son arrived to visit he found his mother sitting bolt upright in bed, eyes distended in an intense stare at the wall as if something on it terrified her.
She was also quite dead. The body was quickly and discreetly removed but the rumour spread outwards like a miasma from ward to ward and from relative to in-law and, as a consequence, an unusual number of quite sick people asked to be discharged. The official response was to diagnose a ward outbreak of paranoia and prescribe counselling and sedation.
However, it was only when these fears, or in hospital parlance, psychoses, spread to doctors, nurses and even managers that it was decided a change had to be made. The decision was taken when a consultant on neurology, with an interest in psychology, observed in a dry and analytical statement that, rather like the tremors in an earthquake, the further the wards from the Richardson room, the lesser the number and severity of complaints. This, with its connotations of a spreading infection supplied by one of their own and most respected, prompted the authorities to action.
So Lisa Richardson had been moved with some difficult
y. She had to be strapped to a reinforced trolley by a group of burly orderlies and police officers and escorted from her austere but increasingly chaotic room to the more remote and larger, cell-like room One7B. This lay at the end of a long corridor, the rooms off which were largely used for storage in a decaying area of the hospital scheduled for demolition. This move had immediate benefits for the patients and staff on their wards but an inverse proportion of effects on the few staff whose duties included the care and maintenance of One7B. Seen in daylight from a rational perspective, the room, although sparse and unappealing, was in every other way similar to regulation hospital accommodation.
But now it was always damp; the windows and walls spotted with condensation. Sometimes it was warm and damp, sometimes freezing and damp, and at times it seemed to be both. It could manage to go from hot and muggy to icy in a matter of seconds and the light, to say the least, was inconsistent.
However, the most alarming aspect of One7B was that the unfortunate nurses who serviced the room were never entirely sure where Lisa was. They knew that in reality she was heavily sedated and strapped to the bed, despite this contravening hospital regulations, but then they would see her crawling across the ceiling or lying in the corner of the room halfway up the wall. What’s more, and this they could objectively verify, the position of the bed in the room was never the same on any two visits. The bedclothes placed securely round the patient each time the bed was made, found their way to the furthest fringes of the room. On one occasion they were found placed neatly folded in the sink by the door with the tap turned on. The nurses had become used to the tap, which turned itself on and off at will.
But it wasn’t just the room. To the staff, including Jenny, the length of the corridor leading to One7B never seemed the same and as a consequence it was difficult to estimate how long the walk to minister to Lisa would take. The lighting was only predictable in that it never worked as expected. The whole block was bitterly cold although Lisa herself seemed unconcerned by this. She never moved or spoke, just lay on her bed, face turned towards the door, eyes wide open and her mouth making the shape of what, on anyone else’s face, would have been a smile. But on her it was like the grimace of the hideously corrupt clown from your worst nightmares. In fact it was this last detail more than anything, which, over the few short days that Lisa was in the room, caused the staff either to refuse the duty or go off sick.
Jenny had just finished speaking to the hospital chief executive about the problem when two men, who were the only visitors to room One7B, knocked on the door of her office. Councillor Richardson looking haggard, stooped and increasingly frail was accompanied as usual by the man she now knew was the editor of the Journal. She rose from her desk and shook hands.
“There’s been no change in her condition and I’m sorry but you’ll find the room even more of a mess this time.”
The men followed her through the over lit corridors of the main hospital with the antiseptic artwork on the walls and the infectious hospital smell, to the corridor leading to One7B. Here the lighting, although of hospital standard, seemed to flicker and dwindle and there was a very different type of smell which, although it defied description, was worse than sickly and felt strangely threatening. All three of them had learnt from a harrowing previous experience that it was better not to look at the walls. They finished the short walk in an altered and far less secure state of mind than they began it. Jenny Dawlish unlocked the door and let them in.
“I’ll wait outside if you don’t mind.”
Since the disturbing encounter with the smeary substance, that on inspection had proved to be a half eaten human liver, she’d not been able to make herself enter the room.
Jim hated these visits, but as Lisa’s mother refused to go, felt he had to support Derek. It was only four days since Lisa was admitted to the hospital yet in that time her father seemed to age twenty years. Jim, after visiting, found himself constantly looking back over his shoulder. The experience left him feeling contaminated and on returning from hospital he’d drink a large whisky whilst drawing a bath and then take another large whisky with him into the bathroom. He needed cleansing to rid him of the contagion he feared would otherwise become a permanent part of his life. Gradually during the long soak and vigorous scrubbing he would lose the sensations of taint, impurity and deep rooted unease that the visits imparted. It was only after the drink and bath that he felt sufficiently decontaminated to mix with his family.
Jim and Derek entered room One7B reluctantly; these visits never lasted more than five minutes but they were a very long five minutes. Jim hovered by the door as Derek advanced halfway towards the bed, never nearer, from where he tried to think of something to say to his daughter. He no longer brought flowers, not after that first visit; what had happened to them had caused the nurse too much work. Not that they’d seen any nurses in this part of the hospital recently.
Jim, keeping his eyes away from the bed and whatever was making the noise in the corner by the window, looked at his watch again. There were still two minutes to go. He sensed a movement and looked up. Derek had moved to the bed. He was standing with his hands on the raised sides leaning forwards as if listening. To his relief he couldn’t see Lisa’s face but suddenly he heard a voice, soft but harsh, not Derek’s and certainly not a young woman’s. Just one sentence, quietly spoken yet clear.
“They know what you’ve done and it’s time you paid.”
Richardson began to back away but then the voice, this time different: a much lower register,
“You know the place, the binding place, go there.”
Then a mocking travesty of Lisa’s voice; girly and cruel.
“You can join me there, Daddy, but it won’t be the way you used to like it.”
There was a burst of deeply unpleasant giggling that seemed to come from every corner of the room. Then a voice screeched
“They watch and wait.”
Derek shuffled quickly and shakily back across the room to Jim, who opened the door and backed out as fast as possible.
***
Jenny Dawlish locked the door and shepherded them down the corridor with Jim anxiously turning to look over his shoulder and Derek stumbling like a zombie saying nothing. She walked with them to Reception, the Councillor appeared to be in shock, and the Journal’s editor hurried him out of the hospital turning only to say,
“I don’t think we’ll be coming back.”
“Yes, that would be best.”
Jim helped Derek into the car. He scraped the accumulation of frost from the windscreen with bare hands without noticing the cold. On the drive back to Richardson’s house the councillor sat hunched in the front seat rocking back and forwards. Jim could think of nothing to say to comfort him. The car pulled up at Richardson’s well lit house and before Jim could ask if he wanted any help, Richardson turned towards him and said calmly in a resigned tone with his eyes focused somewhere behind Jim’s shoulder,
“That’s where she is, I’ll join her, they’re watching.”
He opened the door, got out, and walked up the driveway towards the light. Jim drove home quickly trying to concentrate on whisky and hot water.
***
For Jenny Dawlish, however, the night had one more trip to One7B in store. A local policeman who’d attended the night Lisa was admitted turned up. Barford she thought his name was. His last duty of the day was to check if the patient was sufficiently well to make a statement. On being told no he insisted on checking himself. Jenny was irritated by the man’s manner and patronising attitude; she knew she shouldn’t let him but she was on edge and frayed. It would serve him right to get a taste of what they had to deal with; see if he felt so sure of himself then.
So she agreed but was almost disappointed; this time the walk to the room seemed quite normal. Jenny unlocked the door and waited outside, but not for long, within moments the door burst open and the policeman hurtled out screaming, hands scrabbling at his neck and ran off down the corri
dor. She locked the door and followed but he’d disappeared from view. A nurse told her later he checked into A and E complaining that his throat had been damaged from the inside. So Jenny picked up the phone and made the call leading to Lisa being moved to a secure unit within eight hours.
CHAPTER 29
A MURDER OF CROWS
Next morning Davenport was mopping up the last of his breakfast egg yolk with a piece of buttered toast when he saw a police squad car pull up in front of the bungalow. He rose stiffly, brushed crumbs from his sweater, downed the remains of his tea, straightened his tie and slowly marched to the front door. He unlocked and opened it just as one of the police officers was about to ring the doorbell.
“Morning Sir Nigel, sorry to disturb you but we’d like to ask you a few questions if that’s all right.”
“Yes I suppose it will have to be. I thought they’d have sent the local chap who gave me the lift, what’s his name, Barford?”
“You won’t be seeing him for a bit, Sir, he’s signed off sick, had some type of nervous problem, you know, gone in the head like.”
“Funny, he didn’t strike me as the sensitive type. Anyway you’re wasting your time, I told you all I could about that attack over on the dig.”
The police shuffled about uncomfortably for a moment then one of them said apologetically,
“No it’s not about that, it’s something else is this, Sir. The thing is like, we’ve had a complaint, several complaints in fact, but we’ve got to follow this one up because the Chief Constable seems to have taken an interest in it. Seems he’s an acquaintance, through golf and the Lodge, of Mr Carver who lives up in your old place.”
“What’s that creature raving about now?”
“Well it seems like, that he sort of thinks that you and the Reverend Joyce are involved in some type of conspiracy to drive him out of the Hall, in fact when we’ve spoken to you we have to go across to the Rectory.”