by Brian Hughes
Table of Contents
THE GREYMINSTER CHRONICLES
BOOK THE FIRST: HOBSON & CO (PARANORMAL INVESTIGATORS)
BOOK THE SECOND: PATTERNOSTER ROW
BOOK THE THIRD: THE FELLOWSHIP OF DOVECOTE HALL
BOOK THE FOURTH: THE SECRET HISTORY OF NANCY SKUNK
BOOK THE FIFTH: MISS DUVALL’S ADVOCATE
BOOK THE SIXTH: A COLLECTION OF GREYMINSTER STORIES
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THE GREYMINSTER CHRONICLES
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BRIAN HUGHES
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Copyright © 1997 & 2007 Brian Hughes
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PUBLISHED BY HARRIS & HUGHES INDEPENDENT PUBLISHERS
E-book conversion by Tony Kingsnorth
BOOK THE FIRST: HOBSON & CO (PARANORMAL INVESTIGATORS)
Chapter One: The Dark and Distant Past
October 31st, 1896. This is not a good night to be out. The rain is beating down with such ferocity that it rattles through Thomas Hobson’s skull, as he makes his way through the narrow Lancashire streets. Every so often he stops and leans forward on the twisted stick he carries with him, his skeletal fingers wrestling the damp leaves from his sodden clothes.
Here he comes now, look! His eyes as hard as steel; alert as a raven’s.
At length he pauses beneath a wheezing gas lamp on the corner, trying to catch his breath. A flash of lightning! The Victorian terrace known as Applegate is momentarily lit against the palette-knifed ridge of the fells. Number 114, home of Thomas’ long-time colleague Samuel Foster, stands out against them like some demented, screaming skull. A fitting sort of house for what will happen tonight.
Taking the brass knocker in his bony grip, Hobson knocks. A resounding knock that echoes down the entrance hall, rousing Foster from his forty winks.
Time moves forward. A time filled with muttered greetings and trivial observations on the weather. No doubt the reader doesn’t want to get bogged down in the small talk of two old gentlemen and, in the interests of economy, neither do I.
One hour forward then. A wheezing cough rattled up the bookcase startling a newt from its slumbers. It blinked and looked down through the smoke at the two decrepit figures below. The time was approaching nine-thirty and the dimly lit drawing room was filled with the smell of burnt kippers. Bent over their meals Thomas and Samuel ate in thoughtful silence. The shadows cast by the candle danced across the cracked plaster walls, caricaturing the tormented souls of the dead.
At length Hobson laid down his cutlery, steepled his fingers and drew in a deep breath.
“You know, I must admit Samuel. You’ve taken this rather well.”
‘Samuel.’ That sounded odd. Over the years he’d never bothered with the old man’s Christian name.
Without moving his eyes from the plate, but with a mouth full of mashed fish more of which was cluster-bombing the table cloth than being swallowed, Samuel responded with a voice as contorted as his features. “Well, Thomas. I said ‘Let the best man win’ and that apparently happened to be you.”
Thomas snorted. At least the old idiot was attempting to be civilised. Now to add a note of genuine-sounding sympathy and lose the subject to history once and for all. “You know, most people in your situation wouldn’t have taken things so sportingly. I know how much you wanted that promotion.”
There was a sudden flash of movement from Samuel’s eye. But it was gone in an instant and the crippled octogenarian crammed another forkful of pulp into his mouth.
“What’s done is done,” he said, the words muffled. “No point in wasting a good meal.”
“No, no...” Time to steer the conversation in a different direction, thought Thomas.
“How’s Elizabeth?” he said, dredging up some dark memory. “Couldn’t she come tonight?”
“No!” Samuel’s tone dropped thoughtfully. “She’s gone to her mother’s.”
“Oh, right. I see...”
“Financial troubles. That sort of thing. Couldn’t quite make ends meet you know?” Samuel’s eyes moved slowly up.
“Oh, right. Erm...” The storm outside rattled the loose windows. “I’m er...sorry Sam.”
“No...no problem.” Samuel fumbled with the dusty wine decanter. “All water under the bridge, eh?”
“Yes, I suppose so...”
A silence dropped over the couple. At least, as much of a silence as two aged gourmets with barely a whole tooth between them could muster. Thomas thought about matters. Just ride the evening out as he had done with the storm and everything would look different in the morning.
Unfortunately his mouth had other plans.
“And er, the children?”
“Ah, now, I must show you this.” Suddenly animated Samuel’s corpse-like hands dug into his greatcoat pockets. “I got some daguerreotypes back from the developers this morning.”
With a flourish he tugged out a ring-binder and waved it in front of Thomas’ nose.
“Luckily Elizabeth didn’t know, otherwise she’d have taken them along with the children. Bloody women, eh?”
Thomas swallowed. “Yes...”
“Look. This is Jonathan in the paddling pool. Look at those bony knees. Just like his old father eh? And here’s Sarah Matilda at the nursery dressed up as a bumblebee. Can you see all right there, Thomas?”
“Oh yes. Fine.” In fact if you get any closer, I’ll be going home with one of the damn things speared to the end of my nose.
“Go on. Have a closer look.”
Thomas felt the photographs closing in. “Yes, yes. Lovely children Sam.”
Suddenly Thomas’ nostrils were filled with the stench of chemicals. Blurred beyond his focus Samuel’s gums winked in the candlelight.
“Look! LOOK!”
Thomas felt the gristle in his nose snap as the album shut violently. It was followed by a bolt of pain through his adenoids. Although his eyes were filled with tears he could still make out the shape of Samuel, forcing the album back inside his pocket.
“You know, Sam...I really am terribly sorry. I never thought...”
“Oh. No problems, Tom. No problems. These things happen.” Samuel waved him away with a flippant gesture.
Then he turned aggressively. “Er, is that a fleck of dirt on your fork there, Tom?”
“Oh no, I don’t think so.”
“Yes it is. Look.”
Thomas could see the prongs becoming unfocused as the gap between his eye and the fork narrowed.
“No. I’m sure it’ll be fine.”
“LOOK!”
This time the pain came swiftly, ripping back and forth from the base of his skull. He struggled with the object projecting from his eyeball, trying to wrench it free.
On the edge of his hearing came a new noise. A clunking that sounded heavy and dangerous.
“I bought this today at Ardwick’s Hardware’s in town.”
“Oh yes. It’s very nice.”
Samuel weighed up the copper-bottomed frying pan in his hands, juggling it meanly from one bony claw to the other. “Yes. Nice and heavy.”
Through the already blistering pain Thomas felt a new sensation hit him hard round the back of the head. His neck snapped forward adding whiplash to his chain of injuries.
“It’s certainly got some weight behind it, Sam.”
“Not bad is it?”
Thomas sagged. The tim
e for reasoning with the embittered old fart was over. It was only a bloody promotion for God’s sake!
“Look at this, Tom.”
“Sam, look. I’m sorry about what happened.”
“They say that the noise made when the back of somebody’s skull is wrenched off with a claw hammer is one of exquisite beauty.”
From this close distance Thomas could clearly see the decades of bitterness etched into the contours of Samuel’s craggy face. “Sam. Now look. Let’s be reasonable about this...”
Blackness.
The simplicity of death comes quickly.
Those wildly spoken words had proved to be the final testament of Thomas Hobson, recently appointed Presbyterian minister of St. Oliver’s on the Grey. Not much of an epitaph, I know. But suitable enough for a man whose skull was shrapnelled across the walls whilst in the flickering candlelight his old friend laughed hysterically.
Chapter Two: The Arrival of the Nightmare
October 31st, 1998. One hundred and two years have passed and that ugly night is long since forgotten.
Applegate still looks remarkably similar though, athough now it is bathed in a rich autumn sunlight and the youthful trees from Thomas Hobson’s time have matured into middle-aged characters that look down on the crescent with a profound silence.
The front door is now blistered and speckled with various shades of green paint. The brass knocker fashioned as a ‘Lion’s head gagging on a wreath of flax’ has been replaced by a doorbell plaque; testimony to the fact that the building has been converted into ‘Private Apartments’.
Look behind the cobwebs at the bottom corner. You might discover a crumpled calling card forced beneath a thumb press, which reads quite simply:
Hobson & Co. Business Headquarters.
Paranormal Investigators.
(Exorcist Surgery Thursday Afternoon.)
Flat Three.
Benjamin Foster scribbled frantically, double-crossing every entry in the dusty ledgers. It wasn’t a job he particularly enjoyed but Benjamin was so engrossed in the task that very little of him was visible. In fact all that any other occupant of the room would have seen was a thick mop of curly hair surrounded by an RAF trench coat collar; the coat he’d bought from Greyminster market years before and had worn without ratification since.
After several minutes, where the scritching of a pen nib and the sounds of a partially blocked nose under pressure echoed around the bookshelves, he bit the end of his pen and looked up.
“Right...we’ve got problems Jess. The auditors are due in tomorrow and the books don’t balance.”
Jess occupied the armchair several stacks of books away. The statement had obviously failed to make any impact on Ben’s long time business partner.
Jess Hobson, lounge lizard, intent on making it through his forties with as little effort as possible. He so much as lift his stubbled head from his copy of Old Kent Road. Instead he simply replied, “So what? W’at’s the odd discrepancy?”
Ben felt the cheap pen start to give beneath his teeth.
“Apparently, in our case, about twelve million quid.” He screwed up his face in thought. “God only knows how that’s happened. We haven’t had a case for eight months. Our business, old friend, has about as much chance of survival as a sheep in black suspenders at a Welsh dinner dance.”
“Ben...” Jess pulled his corpulent frame from the sagging armchair and crossed to his colleague. “You’re a sad, anaemic gollywog mate. There’s a very simple way of dealin’ wi’ ledger problems.”
His shovel-like fingers pushed the ledger off the back of the desk and into the waste basket.
“We file it under bankrupt an’ tell the accountants it got eaten.”
“By what, out of curiosity?” Ben drummed the shattered pen on the desktop. “An eight foot cockroach with myopia? A fifteen ton blackbird with an horrendous spastic colon? A lazy, fat, bald headed bastard who sits around reading Old Kent Road all day?”
Jess didn’t even flinch. The two of them had been bombarding each other with insults since before their long term memories had begun. Comments about each other’s respective parentage and doubtful sexual liaisons weren’t so much used to validate a point any longer as mere punctuation.
“Tell ’em it got burnt by accident in some weird sacrificial seance last Thursday. That should scare the buggers from the Inland Revenue off.”
Benjamin sat back and frowned. “Obviously the seriousness of our financial situation hasn’t quite sunk in, has it?” he said. “We’re not just going under, you hedgehog’s pizzle. The soil’s been shovelled on top, the mourners have buggered off home and the bloke from the corner shop’s just written off any chance of getting back that £2.57 for the twenty fags that we owe him. The situation, in short Jess, is grim.”
Jess yawned and slouched back to his chair as Benjamin awkwardly fished the ledger out of the bin. He wiped some old peanut butter off the cover. As if mirroring his colleague, Jess wiped his nose on his tattooed arm.
“Ben...y’re just a pessimistic, whingin’ old woman!”
“I’m not whinging.” Ben gritted his teeth. “I’m attempting to point out a major problem with our crumbling business empire.”
“But you are ‘An Old Woman’?”
“To coin a metaphor Jess, we’re careering down Haemorrhoid Drive with sharp and pointed heads.”
Rooting himself deeply into the bent springs that over the years had moulded themselves to the shape of his body, Jess fumbled for his magazine.
“Stop worryin’ and put the kettle on.” He found it and burrowed his head back into the ‘True Confessions’ column. “I’m sure your prolapsed polyp of a brain can sort it out.”
A couple of thoughtful moments passed.
“And what do you propose I use as a tea bag? A pair of your old Y fronts bound with string from last year’s Christmas presents?” Ben looked sorrowfully down at the rows of figures. “Let’s be honest Jess. If Mrs Prune doesn’t provide us with a case soon we might as well be bankrupt.”
Mrs Prune lived upstairs.
In fact, Mrs Prune lived all over the house. Her omnipotent character had worked its worldly-wise fingers into every nook and cranny of the building.
Mrs Prune also went under the name of ‘Madame Victoria’, considering herself to be a white witch. She had added the ‘E’ to the Madam for the same esoteric reasons that she didn’t regard herself as a clairvoyant. Because she wasn’t exactly sure how to spell it. But witches and clairvoyants amounted to much the same thing anyhow and the extraneous ‘E’ only added an air of mystery to her title anyhow.
At that moment Mrs Prune was perched on a wooden stool resembling a heavily made-up orangutan. She stared at an old plasma ball the motor of which had long since given up the ghost.
The room was a dark and dingy affair, the atmosphere enhanced by the closed curtains. A solitary candle smouldered alongside the sauce bottle. Occult artefacts such as crystals, pendants and skulls embossed with ‘A Present from Ryegate’ populated the shelves. These were intermingled with other assorted ornaments that one would normally purchase from cheap novelty shops.
A purple curtain, peppered with the sequins and hastily sewn on patches, barely disguised the kitchen beyond. Assorted pots and pans poked their inquisitive heads around it, studying the proceedings like children that ought to have been upstairs in bed.
Edith Norton cast her eyes about the Tarot cards across the cloth. At length she broke the silence, uncertain whether Madame Victoria had fallen asleep or not. There appeared to be the rasp of snoring drifting up from the stool.
“Ask ’im if ’ee still wants that tub o’ Brilcreem. Or can I chuck it out?”
Seemingly startled Mrs Prune swelled dramatically before responding in a voice that presumably resembled the dearly departed Harold.
“It’s of no further use t’ me where I am, Edith!”
“Oh good. Only the cat ’ad some of it by mistake last Tuesday, an’ I was just w
onderin’.”
One eye squinted open beneath the spangled band wrapped about Mrs Prune’s head. It watched Edith pat down the disgusting green hat that was permanently speared to her head, then closed once more.
“’Ere! W’at’s ’appened to your lisp ’Arry?”
“Lisp?”
“Yeah. You always ’ad a lisp when you was alive.”
Mrs Prune scarcely missed a beat. “There are no lisps where I am now, Edith...”
“Well, you had a lisp last week when you was speakin’ through that Madam Bovine woman at number thirty-two!”
Edith Norton had been coming to Mrs Prune’s for two weeks now and until that moment had never noticed a damn thing wrong. However, that bloody Mrs Bloody ‘Bovine’ woman always seemed to muscle in on the act. It was becoming apparent that Mrs Dervine had set a precedent for all future spiritual entanglements with Edith’s late spouse.
“Yes...well...Madam ‘Dervine’ is a fraudulent old sow.”
“Harry Norton!” It was testimony to Mrs Prune’s acting ability that Edith was still convinced that Harry had possession of her turgid body. “I never did ’ear such language!”
For a moment Mrs Norton became thoughtful. “And why’s y’ voice gone so deep? It was always so bloody shrill.”
A grimace shot across Mrs Prune’s wrinkled face. Bugger it!
“I remember Mrs Covington remarkin’ on it. ‘Edith Norton,’ she said. ‘When’s that ’usband o’ yours gonna drop his b...’”
“Oh dear. ’Ee’s gone Mrs Norton!” Mrs Prune shook her head, dislodging the ornamental star from the front of her bandanna. She blinked, drew in deep breath and wondered if she ought to add a yawn of confirmation.
“Then ’ee’d better bloody well get back ’ere! I ’aven’t finished yet!” Edith’s teeth rattled. Mrs Prune found her palm itching uncontrollably. “You’re not havin’ three pound sixty off me for forty blooming seconds o’ conversation.”