Conversations with Spirits

by E. O. Higgins

  When they had gone, Billy edged into the room and pulled the door to.

  “How are you?” he asked.

  “Not too well, as it goes.”

  “You don’t look too good.”

  “Had a bit of an attack.”

  Billy nodded, standing with his back against the door.

  “Don’t worry, it’s not catching. What are you up to today?”

  “Nothin’,” Billy shrugged. “Was waiting for you. I guess I’ll go back to my room.”

  “No. Don’t do that! Can you do me a favour instead?”

  I gestured for him to come closer and Billy shuffled cautiously to the side of my bed, sinking awkwardly to his haunches.

  “I’ve been told I need to rest, Billy,” I explained. “But Beasant’s event is happening later today.”

  “Yes, I know,” Billy responded, tugging at his beard. “I was down there earlier en saw the crowd.”

  “Well, assuming I won’t be able to attend—which seems likely at this stage—do you think you could go down there and watch it for me?”

  Billy shrugged: “I s’pose so.”

  “Good man!” I reached out and picked up the glass from the bedside table. Taking back a mouthful of water, I let it settle before continuing: “You see, whilst I’m sure Doyle’s an honest sort of fellow, he believes this stuff all too easily…

  “He’s going to write up what takes place today—which I’m sure will be his own, truthful interpretation—but, as he himself freely admits, he has recently gone over to the supernaturalists, and that can only serve to colour his narrative.” I twisted my neck round as far as I was able, so that I was better able to hold Billy’s eye. “I want you to be more detached than that.”

  “What d’you want me to do?”

  “What I need you to do is to assume that the impossible is impossible. Don’t allow yourself to only see what you’re supposed to see, Billy—you have to see everything.”

  Blinking rapidly, Billy remained motionless—his dark, watchful eyes appraising me for a moment. Then, with a slow, resolute nod, he stood up and turned.

  “I’ll do my best.”

  As I watched, Billy strode purposefully across the room and quietly let himself out, an entirely different man to the one I had met in Pegwell Bay two days earlier.

  CHAPTER IX

  Falls the Shadow

  A WHISTLE BLEW, as the train shuddered over the points and drew slowly to a halt. With the pistons still hissing, I threw back the door and jumped down onto the station floor.

  As the clouds of steam cleared, I turned, glancing up at Katherine. Standing just inside the door, wearing a tea-gown and broad-brimmed hat, she extended a gloved hand. As I took it, accepting her not substantial weight, she moved gently forward and stepped down, her free hand pressed to her hat as she angled her head through the slim doorway.

  “Well, here we are,” I remarked, gazing about the platform, whilst Katherine brushed down her dress beside me. “Wherever that is.”

  Further along the platform, we observed a man in a blue porter’s uniform standing outside the station-office, directing a crowd of elderly female passengers towards some steps at the far end of the station.

  As we approached him, the porter swung his head around and looked at us; smiling good-naturedly, he muttered a greeting.

  “Good afternoon,” I hallooed. “My wife would like to have a look at your ruins.”

  Pausing, the porter blinked, his eyes flicking to Katherine and then back to me: “Sorry, sir?”

  “An old church—on a hill,” explained Katherine. “We saw it from the train.”

  “Oh? You mean Chapel Hill?”

  “Sounds like a distinct possibility,” I remarked with a laugh. Katherine turned and shot me a reproving look. “How do we get to it?”

  Exiting the station-house a minute later, we surveyed the town beyond.

  Basingstoke looked, at a distance, little more than a huddled cluster of dwellings and commercial properties, veiled beneath the dense mist from over-worked chimneys; a shifting fog that hung over the town and imbued the country air with the agreeable scent of wood-smoke.

  Following the porter’s instructions, we headed down a mud-track and beneath the arches of a railway bridge, where, at the far end, we were met by a small set of stone steps leading up to a wooden walkway. Crossing this, we looked up as the bare ribs of the ruined church came into view.

  Despite it being seated on an overgrown grass tor spread with sinking gravestones, it was with no mournful emotion that we contemplated the ruins of the old chapel. Evidently, the structure was many hundreds of years old—all that now remained of it being a series of pale arches and the remnants of oriel windows.

  Stepping down from the walkway, I paused, motionless, contemplating the ruins—and, with the April sun warming my face and the apple blossom trailing through the air, I was entirely lost within the beauty of the scene.

  I was roused from my reverie by Katherine tugging lightly at my hand. When I turned to look at her, she gazed back at me, and, then, allowing her fingers to slide from mine, she rushed onto the grassy bank and ran towards the ruined chapel. I followed, traipsing up the hill after her and coming to a halt a foot or two from a line of exposed and crumbling buttresses, just as she had done.

  Sensing my presence behind her, Katherine wheeled around sharply and, stretching out her hand, she curtseyed.

  “Pleased to meet you!” she said. “Katherine Hart.”

  “Katherine Hart?” I repeated, pushing my lips onto the back of her silk-covered fingers. “You know, I think perhaps I know your husband.”

  “Really?” she responded, with apparent shock. Taking back her hand, Katherine proceeded to rub it sympathetically across my shoulder. “You poor man. I’m so sorry to hear that.”

  At my expression of pantomime wretchedness, Katherine allowed a subdued laugh. Then, pulling her hand back from my shoulder, she brought it to the brim of her hat—which she instantly launched through the air. Still watching me keenly, she smiled as she methodically plucked the pins from her hair, before, finally, sending her dark tresses toppling down about her shoulders with a practised shake.

  “I love you.”

  Katherine paused; considering the words and then breaking into a smile: “Well, that’s good then, isn’t it?”

  Without another word, she dropped to her knees and, with some force, proceeded to pull back the hem of her dress.

  “What are you doing?”

  Ignoring me, Katherine swung her foot forward, picking the laces free on her left boot, before switching knees and turning her attention to the other.

  Taking off her boots, Katherine placed them neatly on the grass by her side and, rising to her feet, she paused momentarily, giving her dress a perfunctory brushing down.

  “Come along, Mr. Hart!” Katherine exclaimed. Turning her back on me again, she dashed away into the ruins, calling back: “You’re coming after me!”

  After a moment’s hesitation, I followed after her—but, as I did, a peculiar feeling of unease stole over me. Moving cautiously between a pair of white stone buttresses, I passed from overgrown grass and tangled thickets onto the gravelled platform inside the ruin. Immediately, without any discernible cause, the entire atmosphere seemed to change. The skin on my arms prickled, and I realised that, within the course of that moment, the light had dimmed and there had been a distinct drop in temperature. Stranger still was the sudden and complete absence of any noise. Even the birdsong and gentle rustle of the wind passing through the leaves of the distant yew trees seemed to have entirely dissolved.

  Lost amid the strange, cold environment of the ancient structure, I searched for Katherine, but could not seem to see her anywhere. Calling out her name, my voice echoed f
aintly off the broken stonework, the words coming back to me, sounding somehow empty and distant, and serving only to strengthen the sensation that I was utterly alone.

  I carried on calling Katherine’s name, my voice becoming increasingly strained and frantic, until I became suddenly drawn to a mound of loose masonry stacked up in one corner of the building.

  Circling the heap of roughly-hewn rocks, I decided then to climb to its peak to survey the full interior of the ruins, as they stretched out ahead of me. As I did so, it occurred to me that, instead of remaining within the dismal murk of the old church, Katherine must have passed straight through to the lawn of the churchyard beyond. With this thought in mind, I rushed down the stones in haste—and, in doing so, upset a good many of their number. With some of them becoming dislodged around my feet, I stumbled on, until, finally, the ground seemed to rush up at me…

  I lay there for some minutes, intermittently tensing and relaxing the muscles in my arms and legs, checking for damage. Finally satisfied that I had incurred only minor injuries at most, I pulled my cheek from the floor and wiped my sleeve through the dust on my lips. Drawing myself up from the ground, I paused suddenly, my hand wavering up towards my neck. Something was caught in the back of my throat.

  A succession of heavy coughs finally cleared the object, which I summarily ejected into my awaiting hand.

  In a pool of spittle upon my rubble-scored palm, I looked down at what I at first took to be a piece of chalk. Turning it over, I saw that it was, in fact, a tooth—a premolar, complete with root.

  Working my tongue tentatively about my mouth, I prodded at the hole the absent tooth had made, becoming suddenly alarmed by the strong taste of blood in my mouth. Indeed, it soon became clear that my mouth was filling with it—its hot scent rising through my nostrils. Soon, I could feel it trembling in the back of my throat, rising and retreating with the rhythms of my breathing. I clamped my teeth down and pushed my fingers hard against my lips, but the flood continued. With my cheeks swelling, a premonitory tremor of anguish rippled through me—then, finally, my mouth burst open and a jet of dark blood shot onto the ground ahead.

  For a moment, I sat there, hunched up and gasping; a final bubble of blood erupting upon my parted lips, as I watched the blood drain slowly into the gravel, becoming little more than a dull smear.

  There was a minute’s pause perhaps, before I suddenly became aware of a sort of soft weight on the centre of my tongue. Without thought, I set about instantly expelling the object. It hurtled out of my mouth, whistling through parted lips, onto the ground before me—another tooth.

  Though by now my hands were shaking uncontrollably, I braced myself and pushed an exploratory finger into my mouth—only for it to bring away more teeth; rows of them, instantly detaching from the gum with only the lightest pressure from my finger-tip—and then being spewed out and discarded fully-formed onto the ground before me.

  A shadow fell across the ground and I looked up. Katherine was standing over me, looking down. I watched her heavily-lashed dark eyes drift from mine to the scattered profusion of teeth resting on the ground before me.

  The relief I felt at seeing her was overwhelming—and I shot her a wide smile, but, as I did, my hand snaked automatically towards my mouth, and, reaching inside, I snapped off my entire front set.

  I sat up in the bed, breathless, my heart pounding. For a minute after the dream had ended, I continued to see Katherine’s face, but then her image slipped away.

  If I tried to force the memory, it always became something remote and unattainable. Turning my head, I looked down at the empty space on the bed next to me, with a familiar feeling of loss and helplessness crowding my consciousness again.

  Lying still on the mattress, I tried for some minutes to bring to mind the details of how Katherine and I had actually arrived in Basingstoke, wondering how much—if any—of the dream had been based on reality, but already my mind had started to recoil from it and my recollection had grown dim. Soon, the details of the dream would ebb away, and I would have nothing more interesting than a mild hangover to think about.

  Nightmares were nothing new—I have had them, of some kind or other, throughout my life. However, perversely, of late, it has been not the nightmares but the happy dreams that I have found more disturbing. It is far more painful to awake from a beautiful slumber and—in that brief period when the continuity of life is still lost to you—to reach across the bed for a hand that is not there.

  I stared blankly into the corner of the ceiling for some minutes, before pushing my arm across to the bedside table in search of the brandy. My hand swooped blindly down, gradually lowering towards the table-top—until, finally, it knocked into the side of the glass of water, sending it crashing to the floor. The noise caused me to flinch and, with this, came a sudden involuntary twist of my shoulder, producing a fierce electric pain to pulse through it. Clearly, I was still not in a good way…

  With a hand pressed to my neck, I turned over and pushed myself from the bed.

  “Doyle…” I muttered, looking across at the bedside table, and the total absence of my brandy bottle.

  Rising unsteadily to my feet, I skirted restlessly about the room searching for the missing bottle, wondering how it was that Doyle might have so successfully hidden anything in such a sparsely-appointed room.

  Pulling back the curtains in order to check the ledges, for a moment I looked dazedly back at the pallid face reflected on the black gloss of the window-pane. Then, refocusing my eyes, I looked out dimly at the dark rooftops below, wondering what time it was and how long I had been asleep.

  I crossed the room and picked up the lamp. With my fingers turned around its handle, I dropped uneasily to my knees and searched under the bed—but could still see nothing of the brandy bottle.

  “Christ, you’re not my doctor,” I snorted angrily. Straightening up my body, I threw my face onto the mattress in exasperation.

  Just at that moment, there was a sudden and urgent rapping at the door and, looking across, I observed through the gap between the door and the floorboards, the shadow of someone standing on the other side.

  “Mr. Hart, there you are,” Doyle exclaimed brightly, as I pulled open the door. Before I knew it, he had reached out, snatched my hand and shaken it rapidly. Then, evidently bringing to mind the fact that I was supposed to be convalescing, he moderated his tone. “How are you feeling now?”

  “I don’t know,” I responded sulkily. “I’ve only just woken up. It’s difficult to say.”

  Turning my shoulder on him, I crossed back to the bed and sat down upon it, gesturing for him to enter. He did so, buoyantly traversing the threshold and leaving the door open behind him. At which point, Billy—who had apparently been lurking somewhere in the corridor—entered the room after him and pushed it to.

  “I take it from this show of exuberance, that Beasant’s thing went well?”

  “Mr. Hart,” Doyle responded, with a satisfied sigh. “I am not overstating the case when I tell you that there can no longer be any doubt that supernatural forces, supernormal forces—whatever you may wish to call them—exist. This is now a verifiable, scientific fact. This is a great day for humanity—and for history!”

  I allowed a moment to pass, nodding slowly at Doyle’s enthusiasm and hoping it would pass.

  “How long was it?” I asked.

  “Sorry?”

  “Beasant’s display. How long did it go on?”

  “I don’t know,” Doyle responded thoughtfully, turning towards Billy. “Perhaps fifteen or twenty minutes? A little longer maybe?”

  Billy nodded.

  “And what time is it now?”

  Looking significantly rankled by this rather pedestrian line of questioning, Doyle dipped into his waistcoat and retrieved his watch. Opening the case, he looked down and responded: “It�
�s eight-fifty-three.”

  “Nearly nine o’clock? So, if it took twenty minutes, what have you been doing all this time?”

  “I was going to come en see you,” Billy said suddenly. “But then—–”

  “—–I told him to let you be, Mr. Hart,” Doyle interposed. “I thought you probably needed the rest.”

  I sighed heavily and rubbed at my eyes.

  “And another thing, what the hell have you done with the brandy?”

  Doyle looked back at me incredulously.

  “There was a bottle of brandy on my bedside table,” I said tersely. “What have you done with it?”

  “Mr. Hart!” Doyle said, letting his agitation show. “We have rather more important things to be discussing! As well as giving you time to sleep, the reason I wanted to leave you alone was so that I could write this!” Doyle pulled open his suit jacket, revealing a sheaf of rolled-up writing-paper inside.

  There was a pause.

  “You’ve written it up already?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then it is just as well I’m not drinking. I’ll be able to tell you how it was done in a minute!”

  Doyle smiled, shaking his head indulgently: “Mr. Hart, what we saw was a miracle. It happened before our very eyes. Is that not right, Billy?”

  Billy turned eagerly to me, but then, checking himself, looked away. I could tell that—though he agreed with Doyle—he wished to avoid the possibility of offending me by saying as much.

  “Billy, for heaven’s sake,” I said wearily. “Don’t worry about it. If you witnessed a miracle, just say so.”

  With a look of relief, Billy nodded.

  “Right. So it was a miracle then, was it? That’s what you’re saying?”

  “Mr. Hart,” Doyle said, reaching his hand into his suit jacket and extracting the pages. “Everything I have written here is absolutely accurate. You could ask anyone from a crowd of over two hundred people—they would tell you the same thing.”