Sciron

by David Rashleigh

  “You are a part of this, but what part I don’t know. What I do know is that there is a dead woman over there, her father is the man you saw, and the police are on their way. On top of all that, there is no way they are going to believe what happened here.”

  “Why?” asked Mike. The answer actually gave him a crumb of comfort.

  “Ghosts,” said the man. “Do you believe in them?” he clearly wasn’t expecting the answer that Mike gave him.

  “I didn’t, until they brought me here.”

  Thursday Evening

  It had been a difficult few hours. The passer-by who had been at the scene of Janice’s death was an off-duty policeman, hence his insistence on calling his colleagues. Fortunately, he had also witnessed the accident, and was able to make a statement to the effect that had not seen anybody near the woman that he had seen fall.

  The police had interviewed Jack Rimmer, Cedric Morgan and Mike Simpson and released them pending the outcome of the coroner’s inquest. Jack’s story had seemed reasonable: it had, after all, been close to the truth. He told the police that he was researching the disappearance of his father and had discovered that Morgan had investigated the case at the time. Morgan, on the other hand (he said), felt responsible for Rimmer senior’s death, and wanted to revisit the site before his own, imminent, demise. His daughter had accompanied them and, in the terrible weather, had become separated from them, leading to her tragic death.

  Mike Simpson stuck to his excuse of researching old railways; the rather damp but still readable papers in his backpack appeared to support his story. The detective sergeant that interviewed all of them knew that there was something wrong, but had no credible explanation to back up his theory. He was especially puzzled as to why they should choose the worst day of the year, weather-wise, to visit the few visible remains of a railway that had been shut for over forty years.

  Speaking to Cedric Morgan had been a waste of time. The man was inconsolable and unable to put a coherent sentence together. Thus the decision was taken to release all three men with stern warnings to make themselves available should the need arise, and to inform the police stations local to Janice’s family to notify them of her demise. They were returned to Jack’s car and, having tried unsuccessfully to speak to the Mellings, Jack had driven the three of them back to the hotel.

  Now they sat around a single table in the adjacent pub having meant to have a meal but finding that none of them had an appetite. Instead they nursed large Scotches, which was a first for Mike but who had joined the others for fear of seeming ungrateful. Morgan stared morosely at his drink as Jack and Mike spoke about the day’s events.

  “You said that the ghosts brought you here,” enquired Jack, his former career reasserting itself. “Tell me about it.”

  Mike explained about the visitations, first at home, then at work, and described how he had been led to the site of the old railway. He spoke about how he had been in one place one moment, then had seemingly woken up somewhere different two hours later without being able to account for what had happened in between. He recounted his mother’s story about his great-grandfather having been lost at sea and wondered aloud whether that had any bearing on the day’s events. Jack made a mental note to research which ship he had been lost with, but thought that the SS Orestes would be a good place to start.

  What neither man could work out was why Mike had been brought to Penwortham at all. There was a clear connection for both Jack Rimmer and Cedric Morgan, yet neither had been visited by the spirits. The Mellings had simply been living on the site of Jack’s father’s murder, hence their involvement, but why Mike? The only plausible explanation was that the spectres were not physical manifestations and therefore needed a live person to do their dirty work. Simply taking over Morgan’s body wouldn’t have sufficed: they clearly wanted him to suffer. Well, they had succeeded in that, at least.

  Jack realised that, with all this talk of ghosts, he had never actually witnessed anything supernatural. He recalled Steve Melling’s comment, that this would make a great book. It dawned on him that there was a book in this, involving spooks, but not the paranormal kind. Jack leaned across to Morgan and spoke to him.

  “Cedric, do you want to atone for what you have done?”

  ***

  The Royal Preston hospital was experiencing a very busy day. In addition to twenty-four victims of the motorway pile-up, the emergency department had also seen the admission of one man in his eighties who had been carried into the waiting area in the arms of a burly, shaven-headed man. Both men were drenched, and Kevin Anderson’s appearance caused the staff on duty to suspect at first that the old man’s condition was the result of foul play. That impression lasted seconds: the triage nurse rapidly assessed George Williams’ condition and he was quickly taken from Kevin to where a tired but competent doctor was able to make a formal diagnosis of myocardial infarction and get George on oxygen and transferred to the coronary care unit.

  Kevin was left sitting in Accident and Emergency. Having given the staff George’s name, address and the fact that he didn’t think that he had any family, all he could do was sit and worry. Each time that the image of George’s grey face looking at him, pleading, crossed his mind, Kevin found that his eyes filled with tears. Every few minutes, he would ask the receptionist on duty if there was any news: each time he was politely told that, when there was any news, he would be told. As he sat, fretting, another ambulance pulled up outside. Unable to restrain his curiosity, Kevin was surprised to see his drinking partner Steve Melling climb out, seemingly cradling a towel in his arms. He was followed by a woman who was helped into a wheelchair. Kevin was about to approach Steve when a woman’s voice called to him.

  “Mr Anderson, your friend is being moved to the ward. Would you like to go with him?”

  Nodding his assent, Kevin followed the nurse who reunited him with George, now strapped to a trolley. His face was partially obscured by an oxygen mask, and a drip fed diamorphine and a thrombolytic into his left arm. Kevin, overwhelmed by the rather pathetic sight, wiped a tear from his eye and, on an impulse, held the old man’s hand as a porter wheeled the trolley through the labyrinthine corridors and into the lift.

  Steve Melling hadn’t seen Kevin. His attention was fully occupied with the scrap of humanity that lay sleeping in his arms. The ambulance had turned up after about ninety minutes, during which time Steve had become more and more concerned at Katie's lethargy and pallor. He knew that she had lost what looked like a great deal of blood, and the midwife’s assurances that it was probably nothing out of the ordinary had worked for the first half hour; it hadn’t occurred to him that, having fed the bay, his wife was simply exhausted. The fact that she had been sat in a pool of her own blood had done nothing to help her feel any better.

  It had taken the staff on the neo-natal unit just a few minutes to ascertain that both mother and child were healthy and clean both up. The stub of the umbilical cord had been cut closer to the baby’s navel; she had been put in a nappy and wrapped in blankets then placed in a clear Perspex cot next to her sleeping mother. Steve sat, Joshua on his knee, and looked at them both for a few minutes then took his son to a payphone to make two emotional telephone calls, first to his parents then to Katie's mother. He then returned to check on his wife and daughter, before taking Joshua to a small play area located close to the ward to await the arrival of the grandparents. As his son played, Steve allowed himself a satisfied grin. His expression went entirely unnoticed by the other new fathers nearby, all of whom had similar smiles on their faces, too.

  ***

  “I want to write your biography,” said Jack later that evening. “Warts and all. I want you to tell me the truth about everything, good or bad, that you ever did, and I’m going to get it published.”

  Morgan thought for a moment, then nodded slowly.

  “Very well,” he replied, his voice soft, distant. “I suppose that at least some good will come out of this sorry affair, for you at l
east. There isn’t long, you know, for me to tell you everything.”

  “Then we’d best get started. I’ll drive you home tomorrow, then I’ll have to go home myself. We’ll start on Saturday morning.”

  Mike Simpson, whose eyes had been following the exchange as if watching a tennis match, was feeling somewhat left out.

  “What is it that you did?” he enquired.

  Seeing that Morgan was unwilling to speak to the young man, Jack replied for him.

  “This man was recruited by MI5 from Oxford in the late thirties, and was with the service for fifty years. He has seen some history in the making, I can tell you.”

  “Not all his own doing, like this, I hope,” said Mike.

  “That’s what I intend to find out. It’ll take months to go through the records to check his story out, but I think that I possibly have my first best seller on my hands.” A note of enthusiasm had crept into Jack’s voice, a sentiment that lasted the split second that it took for the image of Janice, lying on the road, to once more explode into his thoughts.

  The three of them were quiet for a minute or two, nobody knowing quite what to say next. A thought was forming in Mike’s mind, but he wasn’t sure that this was the right moment to raise the subject. Realising that the next day he would be on his way back to York and his humdrum existence, he spoke up.

  “Jack, I...er...well, finding my way over here was really good.” Lame, he thought. “What I mean is, my job doesn’t take any thought, and going to the museum and everything to find this place it was, well, interesting.” Not much better, Mike.

  Both older men were looking at him now. He continued:

  “I’m not saying this right, am I? Look, I managed to find this old railway all by myself, and I’ve never done anything like this before. The thing is, could I help you? Can I help with going through the records, or something?”

  Jack pondered the lad’s offer, but realised that he couldn’t afford an assistant without a sizeable advance from a publisher, and that wasn’t likely to be forthcoming in the timescale they had before them. He saw the disappointed look on Mike’s face as he explained this, and felt bad for the boy. What happened next surprised both of them.

  “I’ll pay,” interjected Morgan. “I’m not short of a bob or two, and I can’t take it with me. I’ve caused you suffering too, lad, but hopefully you will be able to forgive me like Rimmer here probably can’t. What do you say, Rimmer?”

  “Looks like you’ve got yourself a new job,” said Jack, wondering how it might turn out.

  Epilogue

  To the true Communist, politics is their religion and the ultimate authority is the State. There is no room for God or an afterlife in such a philosophy, which is why George Williams spent the rest of his life in a state of confusion. His experience on the old railway embankment was clear evidence of an existence beyond the grave that contradicted his life-long beliefs.

  His heart attack had been a moderate one, but which had left him permanently weak and unable to care for himself. He spent his last days in a nursing home, visited by Kevin Anderson from time to time, unable to make any sense of the events of that Thursday. He had been forced to sell his house to pay for his care, the proceeds of which had run out when he had his second, fatal heart attack. Only Kevin attended his funeral.

  The flat on The Junction was too small for a family of four, so Steve and Katie Melling and their children moved into a three-bedroom house not far away. They invited Jack Rimmer to be Godfather and honorary grandfather to their daughter, whom they named Jacinta; an honour that Jack readily accepted.

  Cedric Morgan succumbed to his cancer some nine weeks after the death of his daughter. Every day, for as long as he was coherent, Jack listened to his life story, recording the old man’s words for transcription by Mike Simpson. After Morgan’s death, the unlikely pair worked for nine months, cross-referencing Morgan’s recollections with the official records, writing and re-writing each chapter until Jack was satisfied. He had been right about one thing: the book was a best seller. It was even serialised in a Sunday newspaper.

  The hardest part of writing Morgan’s biography had been the part about his daughter. Jack still dreamt about her; occasionally, when he allowed his mind to drift back to the day that she died, he could remember her unbuttoned blouse and the suggestive wink that had promised so much. That image was always followed by her lying in the road in the pouring rain, accompanied by a profound sense of loss that haunted him for years afterwards.

  Mike Simpson had convinced his mother that his trip to Preston had been for a job interview: he claimed to have lied to her in case he hadn’t been successful. He worked hard for Jack Rimmer, but when the book was complete he knew that he needed to follow a different direction. Inspired by long conversations with Jack, Mike applied for, and was accepted, the Intelligence Corps of the Army. During basic training he discovered that he was not as proficient with a real rifle as the virtual one that had once occupied so much of his life, but also realised that he had a previously unknown talent for languages and quickly became fluent in Arabic. Like the Mellings, he never experienced anything supernatural again.

  The old railway remained, silent, largely unnoticed and gradually reclaimed by nature. The people that had worked the line, like the line itself, faded into history. The ghosts were gone but, when the wind blew through the gaps in the embankments and between the trees, some would remark that the resulting moaning was almost human...

  Author’s Note

  Much of the topography of this story is real. The West Lancashire Railway ran between Southport and Preston until 1964: a victim of the Beeching era. Preston was once a significant port; a substantial proportion of all wartime munitions shipments were from the Prince Albert Dock, and one visitor was indeed the SS Orestes. The small estate of flats and houses really exists on the site of Middleforth Junction, although under a different name. The characters are all entirely fictitious, as are all the events, all the product of an over-active imagination. And we all know that ghosts don’t exist.

  Or do we...