by Justin Evans
“He thought I was stressed from . . . you know . . . from Theo dying.” Andrew added: “He was concerned about me.”
“He thought you saw the ghost . . . because you were stressed from Theo dying.”
“That’s correct, sir.” It was a darned good version of things. Andrew was proud of himself for packaging it up this way.
“But the first day,” Sir Alan continued, “Theo was not dead yet.”
Andrew opened his mouth.
“So you did not see the ghost due to stress.”
Andrew hesitated. “Well, I told Mr. Fawkes later. After Theo died.”
“You had continued to see a ghost all that time, then?”
“No,” Andrew mumbled. “Just . . . you know.”
“No, I don’t know.”
Andrew said nothing. Sir Alan chose a new approach.
“Explain to me how you both came to smash the walls of the basement in the Lot. Before you answer, you should know I have accounts from six different boys in the Lot that you and Fawkes were chasing a ghost.”
“Chasing a ghost? What does that mean?”
“You tell me.”
“You said it.”
Sir Alan smelled blood now and did not back down. “The two of you ordered workmen to smash down a wall. Why?”
“I had heard there were some old underground rooms in the Lot.”
“You had? And then you told Fawkes?”
Andrew desperately tried to think of all the angles—why he should or shouldn’t answer this. But there wasn’t time. “Yes,” he said, his face growing hotter.
“And this wall smashing was linked to the ghost.”
“No.”
“You heard there were old rooms in the Lot. Heard from whom?”
“M-Matron,” Andrew invented.
“Do you think if I asked Matron to confirm what you’ve just said, she would do so?”
Andrew swallowed. “I don’t know.”
Sir Alan fell silent. “You’re lying, Taylor,” he said after a moment. “My daughter tells me you have a dodgy reputation in the school already, and now I see your character for myself.”
Andrew’s world was rocked. Persephone had told her father, about him? Told him bad things?
“You’re a practiced liar, the worst to catch out. Not because the facts are so very hard to track down, but because of your demeanor. You more than half believe what you say, because you feel you need to to survive. And you’ll cling to the lies until the last moment. I’ve seen it many times. A sign of a character that’s already compromised. I’ve heard about you. About the drugs.” He paused. “Seen the record. You know we have a zero tolerance policy. You know that if you were to touch drugs here, you would go straight home.” Sir Alan leaned over Andrew now, his face close enough for Andrew to smell his coffee breath. “It’s unfortunate that you feel you need to lie to me. But that’s how it is sometimes. Boys don’t respect a master’s authority. After all, we’re just the staff to them. One might, as a master, feel inclined to phone home, to parents, to procure the extra backing required. But even that is a slippery slope. Boys can be so spoiled, you see, the parents so deluded as to their character, that the power balance can go the other way. Then it’s two against one.”
Andrew had a hard time imagining his father taking sides against Sir Alan; Sir Alan seemed like his father’s kind of guy.
“I’ve made that mistake, and I won’t again,” Sir Alan was saying. “I prefer a different approach. Serve a letter of warning first. That the boy in question is a proven liar, and as such, that boy faces expulsion from the school. Then wait for the parents to become engaged. A blot on their dear boy’s record! Oh, they get to the heart of the matter very quickly, and I either have a problem student to worry about, or I don’t.” Sir Alan sneered at Andrew triumphantly. “I will send that letter to your parents, Andrew. I will have you thrown out of this school.”
“For what?” Andrew replied, frustration and anger growing.
“For lying,” he thundered. “For destroying school property. For ruining morale. For frightening the youngest boys. This isn’t America, where students sue their schools. I have maximum discretion.”
Andrew saw himself getting off the plane at JFK.
You make this good or we’re through with you
“But it needn’t come to that, Andrew,” sighed Sir Alan. He moved to Andrew’s side and squeezed his thick frame into one of the little desks next to him. “It needn’t. I become passionate defending my school because I feel a need to preserve it, improve it. We need the best people possible taking care of the boys. Fawkes,” he added, “is just wrong for the role. That’s all. I don’t want to ruin his career. He’s already more successful than I’ll ever be, as a poet,” he said, sounding disingenuous. “But a housemaster? I think not.” Sir Alan put a hand on Andrew’s arm. Andrew stared at it. “All you have to do”—squeeze, squeeze; Sir Alan had a mighty grip—“is tell me the accurate truth of what happened in the Lot with the ghost.” Three more squeezes. Then he leaned over and tilted his head so he could look Andrew straight in the eye.
“Is Mr. Fawkes in trouble, sir?”
“Possibly. I must find out the truth.”
“He’s a good housemaster,” said Andrew, not quite believing it. “For people like me, anyway.”
“What kind of people is that?”
“I don’t know. Artistic.”
“Wasn’t Theo Ryder artistic enough, then?” Sir Alan said heavily.
Andrew suddenly had had enough.
“I’ve got to go, sir.” He extricated himself from the desk. “I’ll try and remember more. I really will. What’s the best way to be in touch with you? Just come by Headland? Okay. I’ll be sure to. Thank you, sir.”
Andrew fled the Leaf Schools before Sir Alan could stop him, and trudged up the Hill in a blindness of worry and isolation.
“ARE THE WEALTH-CREATING powers of a truly global economy now proved?” The upper-class English accent, rich and arrogant, plucked the words like the strings of a lugubrious harp. “Or do we merely live in a borderless world that allows contagion of all varieties to spread further, faster? The meltdown of the global banking system. Civil war and cross-border conflict. Pandemics such as AIDS, SARS, bird flu, swine flu. Or the more serious threats to civilization.” The voice paused for effect: “Pop Idol and its many spin-offs.”
An appreciative chuckle passed around the room.
They sat around the oval table. Twelve boys, men, and women. The boys—Sixth Formers—wore their tailcoats; the men and women wore suits. In the center of the table—an old one, its wood softened by decades of use—stood two candelabra. The flames stood tall. The faces around the table glowed a pinkish orange in that light, and their dark clothing seemed to thicken to a chiaroscuro black, as if the group had been gathered, not for a group photo, but for a group etching—and they quivered there together under a sketching hand and the flickering light. Before each member sat a silver goblet that had been filled with Madeira. At the head of the table, a boy with long limbs and fingers and deliberate movements that gave him the air of being a giant praying mantis with a forelock, read from a typed essay, flipping pages as he went.
Andrew found the candles mesmerizing. It was the same room he and Persephone had wandered into several nights before. But the room had been transformed, filled now with purpose, as if these figures sitting here were part of a brotherhood, a cabal, lined up against the darkness that lay below them in the wild green of Harrow Park, and they were the tenders of the light. A Madeira bottle, crusty and green, had been set on a silver tray to the side. Even the quotation on the board had changed:
NOCTES ATQUE DIES PATET ATRI IANUA DITIS
Essay Club is by invitation only, Fawkes had explained, as they had walked together from the Lot, Fawkes in a suit, Andrew in his tailcoat; for the more serious scholars. Members write essays, one hour in length, thoroughly researched. Judy’s the faculty advisor, Fawkes added. She tol
d me to invite you. You must have impressed her when you came to see her at the library. Andrew recognized the students from his classes: Scroop Wallace from Ancient History (with spiky hair and an eccentric’s hunch); Domenick Beekin from English (skinny-necked and tiny-headed, a human heron); Nick Antoniades, also from English (swarthy, compact, and confident); and Rupert Askew, the boy currently reading his essay in a plummy accent.
The adults included Sir Alan Vine, leaning his elbows on the table with his bald head held low, with his spectacles and his flared nostrils, like a lineman preparing to charge. Piers Fawkes sat two spots from Andrew. He had seemed jumpy on the walk over; his face was pale, his upper lip damp. He had waved off the Madeira when they first sat down, but doing so seemed to have deprived Fawkes of the benefit of the force of gravity. He clutched the table as if he might be sucked unexpectedly into the sky; he kept noisily unwrapping butterscotch candies and rolling them against his teeth. Sir Alan stared at him ferociously for this. Do you mind, Piers? he had snapped, at last. Mr. Toombs, the Classics beak—thin, kindly, nervous, sibilant—in whose schoolroom they all were, sat smiling, listening to Rupert Askew talk about mutating avian flu viruses. And next to the speaker sat Dr. Kahn. With Mr. Toombs, she was the host of Essay Club. She too had been attentive to Askew for a time. But now Andrew noticed her staring at him, peering as if she saw something she did not like.
MR. TOOMBS PULLED the heavy door closed and turned the key, chattering amiably. Electrifying essay tonight, don’t you think, Piers? All those horrible symptoms. And the section on the Plague—something for you, Judy. Bit of history. Mr. Toombs kept up his patter until he realized the three of them were hanging back and waiting for him to leave; so he said his goodbyes and they stood facing each other in the gloom as he walked away. Mr. Toombs’s classroom sat at the bottom of a long stair to the High Street, its back to the silent, wooded park.
“What did you think, Andrew?” Dr. Kahn asked him.
“I loved it,” he said, with unaccustomed enthusiasm.
“Did you?” She smiled. “Good. I love it too.”
“I think we should start serving Sprite at Essay Club,” grumbled Fawkes, looking drained.
“It would corrode the goblets,” she answered coolly. “Follow me, please.”
She led them into the shadow between the chapel’s grey flanks and the Classics Schools. “No one will overhear us here,” she said, her voice lowered. “There’s something I wanted to say to you both.”
They waited.
“I believe you,” she announced.
“About what?” Andrew said.
“Fawkes has been telling me about your ghost. About how you think it’s Byron’s friend John Harness. I have been curious, of course. But neither convinced nor unconvinced. Then two things happened. First, I had an odd experience in my own home. I thought I felt someone. A threatening someone. Not an actual person, mind you, but a presence. The feeling came just at the moment Piers asked me to help investigate the underground room in the Lot. Curious timing, don’t you think? It was almost as if this . . . someone . . . knew you were asking me to help research John Harness, and then came after me. Made a show of strength. I call that intimidation,” she said. “And then the second was tonight, at Essay Club.”
“I didn’t notice anything,” said Andrew, puzzled.
“But I did. You,” she said. “You are the very portrait of Byron.”
“You’re the last to notice,” said Fawkes.
“Sitting there, in the candlelight. In your tailcoat. We could have been transported in time. And it dawned on me. This may be precisely what is happening to your spirit. He sees you. Then thinks he’s somewhere else. Or some-when else, if you like—with Byron. It all points to John Harness as your ghost.”
“You’ve had the epiphany,” said Fawkes.
“I have. But I don’t like it. The presence I felt was menacing.”
Andrew felt a rush of hope. “Then maybe you can help me,” he said. He turned to Fawkes. “Remember that . . . vision . . . that I told you about? Where I’m in a dormitory, like the Lot, but with sconces, and carpets, and I’m chasing this figure?”
“Yes, of course.”
“When I first had it, it felt like something terrible was going to happen. But I had the dream again. Two days ago, after we found the cistern. And something terrible did happen, in the dream. I saw a murder.”
“Then, or now?” demanded Fawkes, anxiously.
“Then,” Andrew reassured him. “Except. Um. I was the one committing the murder. I suffocated someone.”
“You suffocated someone?” said Dr. Kahn, surprised.
“Harness did. I saw it from his point of view, if that makes sense. Like he was . . . showing me his home movies. I kind of wish we hadn’t opened up that room,” Andrew said to Fawkes. “It’s like we encouraged him.”
“He’s trying to tell you something,” mused Kahn.
“What?”
Fawkes crossed his arms. “If he’s showing you a murder . . . that’s a fairly clear message. He committed a murder. Guilty conscience.”
“I suspect it’s rather more than that. Our ghost may be dangerous in the present.” said Dr. Kahn.
“May be? Didn’t Andrew tell you? He saw the ghost smothering Theo Ryder on Church Hill.”
Dr. Kahn looked at Andrew intently. “No. I missed that part somehow.” She frowned. “And here is Andrew, all costumed as Lord Byron, dangling as bait, for a murderer? It’s time to get Andrew out of danger, taken out of school, perhaps. Call his parents.”
“That would be the same as getting me thrown out,” Andrew objected.
“Good. I’d rather see you sent down than strangled.”
“If we’re wrong,” Fawkes said, “we would have ruined Andrew’s school career for nothing. For a will-o’-the-wisp.”
“Then why don’t you suggest something,” she said sharply.
“It’s a ghost. How do you get rid of a ghost?”
“Hold an exorcism,” offered Andrew.
“What is it they do, with the mediums?” Dr. Kahn jumped in. “You know, holding hands around the table with the velvet tablecloth and the candles?”
“Séance?” Andrew said.
“Precisely.” Dr. Kahn nodded. “Summon the spirit, and talk with him. Ask him what he wants.”
“That’s obvious,” said Fawkes. “He wants Andrew.”
“Then what about the murder?” Andrew countered.
“There’s no record of John Harness committing murder,” Fawkes said.
“But I know he did.”
“All right. Why don’t we find out for certain?” Fawkes suggested.
“You mean do more research on Harness,” clarified Dr. Kahn.
“Everything’s research to you,” groused Fawkes. “No, I mean a bloody tribunal. Look, what is a ghost? A dead person that’s still meddling with the living. Why? They can’t let something go. In John Harness’s case, there was a murder. He can’t get over it, he can’t get over Byron. So, we find out everything there is to know about the murder, and about Harness’s relationship with Byron.”
“I still call that research,” she quipped.
“Then we have a séance. We summon Harness, and we shove it in his face. We say, we know who you killed, and why; but it’s over. The ghost realizes he’s hanging around the wrong century, and off he goes into the light. End of story.”
“Find out who Harness killed, and why,” said Dr. Kahn. “Not bad, Piers.”
He made a mocking curtsey. “May I have a cigarette now?” He fired up his lighter vengefully; his edge had increased since forgoing the Madeira.
“An especially good plan, since we have a resident Byron expert.”
“Who?”
“Who? You.”
“Oh no. I’m being monitored,” Fawkes said quickly. “I nearly got sacked over knocking down the walls in the basement. I can’t go about with an ectometer, scanning for murder scenes and Lord Byron’s lost socks.
I won’t last a day.”
“I can research it for Essay Club,” proposed Andrew.
They both turned to him.
“That’s clever,” said Dr. Kahn. “You can disguise the fact that we’re researching the ghost by calling it an essay; or even background for your role in the play. You’re at the center of this, Andrew. You’re the closest to it. It’s right for you to lead the charge. I will assist you. When you feel you’ve gathered enough information, we’ll hold the séance. Or better yet—we’ll hold Essay Club. We have the candles, the dark room, and the circle of people already.”
“Do we have to hold hands?” sneered Fawkes.
“We’ll confront the ghost with who he is, and what he’s done,” said Dr. Kahn. “And then we’ll send him on his way.”
“An airtight plan,” said Fawkes.
“Is it?” she said, still thinking. “I just wonder if we’ll be fast enough. It seems like the ghost is becoming stronger. What was the word you used, Andrew?”
“Encouraged.”
Fawkes added: “Maybe he senses he has our attention.”
“Getting the attention of a murderer. Not advisable,” said Dr. Kahn. She pondered a moment, then perked up. “We can do both. The séance and the exorcism. How does one perform an exorcism?”
“I rather think you need a priest,” Fawkes replied.
“Go to Father Peter, then.”
“Me? I just said I was on probation for corrupting the young.”
“Well, Andrew and I can’t invite a priest into the Lot for a bloody exorcism.”
“Whereas housemasters do it all the time.”
“If anyone can, you can.”
“We’re talking about getting sacked on the spot!”
“We’re talking about Andrew’s safety.”
Fawkes churned. He needed more information about Harness to make his play publishable. If a priest were able to put a stop to the ghostly activity immediately. . . then he would be left with no evidence, no story. He was about to object again. Then he caught Andrew’s grey eyes on him again, waiting for an answer.
“All right,” Fawkes said, petulantly. He hungrily sucked on his cigarette. “I picked the wrong week to stop drinking.”