by Mick Jackson
She’s tempted to head straight back to her room, lock the door and lie on the bed till she’s recovered – so that she can be 100% sure she’s not about to have a heart attack. But by the time she reaches the landing she’s thinking, Better to carry on. To get into the room and return the keys as soon as possible.
Denny’s standing right beside her as she slips the key into the lock. They stop and listen one last time. Then Yuki turns the key. She feels the mechanism resist, then accommodate it and surrender. She takes hold of the handle, twists it and finally the door gives way to her.
The room is pristine – the bed neatly made, every surface clean and empty. Yuki’s first thought is, They’ve kept it like this in my mother’s honour. The room is now a museum to her. Like Charlotte and Emily’s rooms in the parsonage. A sacred place.
It’s pretty much a mirror image of her own room, if a fraction smaller. The same decor, with the sink and fireplace up against the same shared wall. When they close the door it’s a little dark so Denny turns on the lamp on the bedside table, which casts a soft light over the bed, making it seem even more hallowed. Then she heads on into the room, so that she and Yuki are standing on either side of the bed. The room is suddenly still, as if all the air has been sucked right out – through the drain in the sink … the gap along the base of the skirting board … the plug sockets. Denny’s staring at the bed – at its impossible smoothness. She slowly reaches out a hand to touch it. To sweep her palm across its cold, flat sheets. But Yuki says, No – before she even knows it. And finds that she’s raised her hand, palm up, like a traffic cop.
I’m sorry. I’m sorry, she says. Then shakes her head.
Yuki is beginning to appreciate how little thought she’s devoted to what she’d do if she ever managed to get in here. It would appear, judging by her own strange behaviour, that she doesn’t want anything to be disturbed. So she stands and waits and listens – in that dead, empty space, with that vacant bed before her. Keeps on waiting, with Denny standing across from her.
She tries to remember what she was like at twelve or thirteen, when her mother was over here. Her preoccupations. She remembers talking to her mother as she packed her suitcase. She and Kumi being driven over to their grandparents. Grandma Hisako taking her into the guest bedroom. Her own lonely bed.
Then she remembers that terrible dread at both her parents being away, halfway round the planet. Feels something quicken. As if aware of something closing in on her. And another lock turns. A door swings slowly open. And all her mother-love comes suddenly rushing up in her again.
Poor Yukiko drops to her knees, with her hands on the bed’s cover, soft and kind. And suddenly crying. With her mother gone – gone and so very far away.
Denny stands and watches. She feels that she should go over, but thinks Yuki might just want to cry and remember her mother on her own. So she continues to stand and watch. And after a while Yuki lifts her head. I’m sorry, she says again. Always apologising. And finally manages to catch her breath, as if a little air has found its way back into the room.
She looks around, wiping her eyes, and heads over to the bedside table. Quietly opens and closes the drawers, one by one. Then peers down the back, by the wall. Kneels and looks under the bed – just dust and a few square metres of carpet that haven’t seen daylight in a long time. She gets to her feet and tiptoes round the room intently, as if her mother might have left a note or dropped something significant – knowing that her daughter might come along all these years later, looking for clues.
She crouches beside the sink and slips her hand around the back of the porcelain column, plucks up the carpet in the corner, while Denny still stands and watches. Until Yuki finally arrives at the table by the window.
She wants to consult the photograph her mother took, to be sure it’s the same piece of furniture, but she left it on the bed next door, with all the others. She could easily slip back and get it, but knows that opening the door might release whatever energy is currently contained within the room and won’t be found again. She tries to convince herself that she doesn’t really need it. She’s studied it on a sufficient number of occasions and can see that it’s the same table her mother photographed, with the window open behind it and the lace curtain billowing in between.
Denny is over by the drawers now, not entirely sure what they’re meant to be looking for. Yukiko lines herself up before the table, so that it more or less matches what she remembers from the photograph. Looks down at her feet. This is where she would’ve stood, she thinks. Then looks at the table. And that is where she sat and wrote the postcard to me and Kumi, saying that she was in Haworth and had looked round the house that belonged to the Brontë sisters. With the window open, warm air rolling in from the street and the net curtain gently buckling. And Yuki has the most powerful urge to go over to the window and close it. Despite the fact that it’s already closed.
She tried to find that postcard before she came out here, and she wonders if she had found it and could now place it in the same spot where it was written whether some powerful, universal circuit would be completed, and what the psychic consequences might be.
She takes out her phone, steps back and does her best to recreate her mother’s photograph. Takes three different shots and stares at each one, unconvinced. She looks around, at the rest of the room. Then turns the camera on her phone to the ‘movie’ setting, starts it recording and slowly pans from right to left. She watches the tiny screen as it sweeps the room. The desk, the drawers, then over to the bed, with Denny caught standing self-consciously – looking down and away. Then, with the camera still running, Yuki walks over to the bed until she catches it squarely in the camera’s frame, allows several moments to pass, each marked by the flash of the small red light at the base of the screen. Then brings the filming to a close.
And yet she knows that she’s failed to capture it. Not surprising, she thinks, when whatever it is she’s after exists on a plane quite separate from our own. Why should I expect to draw something so unfathomable into my stupid little machine?
And then she has it.
A few months ago she discovered an online audio archive of atmospheres. Mainly modern buildings: the inhalations and exhalations of air-cons … the many and various hums of fluorescent lighting … the tonal registers of faceless conference rooms. Each location catalogued quite clinically and with an accompanying photograph. Yukiko should, she now sees, record the room’s atmosphere. A three-dimensional space, into which she can later admit herself, until she’s so deeply immersed that the sound will seal itself over her head.
She turns to Denny and brings a forefinger up to her lips. Then Yuki sweeps her thumb over the screen of her phone until she finds the appropriate icon and taps ‘Record’. She lifts her phone above her head and holds it there, as if she’s filming a concert. Or holding some industrial monitoring instrument, measuring the levels of psychic activity at hand.
How little sound two people can make, she thinks, when they put their minds to it. Although she’s sure that an expert would be able to somehow identify their presence, by aural heat or shadow. But amazing also how, when the most prominent sounds are stripped away, so many tiny sounds slowly allow themselves to be heard.
A car, a couple of streets away, straining on a hill. Tight air ringing in the pipes between the radiators. The window’s anxious rattle. But beneath all this, other, almost inaudible activity. The dust ever settling. The flinch of fibres in the carpet. All the hidden frequencies we have yet to identify.
Then, a minute or so into their silent meditation, another sound slowly emerges – distant movement … slowly assuming a rhythm. Footsteps on the stairs. Reaching the top, then stopping. And, slower, making their way along the corridor.
Yuki and Denny turn and look at one another. Yuki still has the phone raised, just above her head. The footsteps approach, then stop, out on the landing. Denny and Yuki are both staring over at the door now. They imagine the B & B Lady on the ot
her side. Three females of various ages, all standing and silently listening.
Yuki and Denny’s attention is now focused on the door handle. What exactly do you say when you and a friend are caught illicitly sampling the atmosphere of a room that you haven’t rented, as part of some private psychic investigation? What is the appropriate apology at such a time?
They keep on staring at the door handle. Almost willing it to turn. And Yuki silently drops her arm and looks at the screen on her phone, its little red light still happily flashing. I’d turn it off, she thinks, if I was sure it wouldn’t make some tiny bleep in the process. Then wonders if it has a built-in limit to its recording, and what sound it’s likely to make when it reaches it.
But the silence sustained by all three women continues. Could conceivably advance into eternity, one second at a time. Until at last the footsteps that had slowly made their way towards the room make their way off again, and the various creaks of the floorboards can be heard as those feet pad down the landing. Then down the carpeted stairs.
Yukiko waits as long as possible before stopping the recording. And the phone does indeed emit a tiny squeak.
Yuki and Denny breathe again. This is too much, Yuki thinks. It must be inflicting long-term physical damage. Then she and Denny head over to the door. Yuki slips back to turn off the lamp on the bedside table. Denny eases open the door and the two of them creep back out into the world. And as they do so Yuki sees the key in the door where they left it. And thinks, What is the likelihood of someone coming along and standing right by that doorway and not noticing it?
Yukiko knew that her mother had visited the Institute of Psychic Studies when she was in London, not least because she’d talked so animatedly about the place on her return. She’d said what an odd place it was and once or twice mentioned their incredible collection of photographs without going into too much detail. So, long before she boarded the flight to Heathrow, Yuki had added the institute to her itinerary. Had found its location, looked up its opening times and worked out which day she’d most likely call.
It took Yuki two attempts before she managed to get the access she wanted. She first went up the broad stone steps on the Tuesday morning, only minutes after the institute opened. The building was part of a tall Victorian terrace just north of the Marylebone Road, with rusting railings between the pavement and basement, red-brick walls reaching up four or five storeys into the grey January sky and windows that looked as if they hadn’t been washed in twenty years.
She pressed the button below the intercom, pushed at the heavy door when she heard the lock buzz open and walked out onto a cold tiled floor. The reception desk was at the far end of the lobby and Yukiko’s footsteps echoed around the walls as she made her way over towards it. Halfway there she became aware of a huge portrait bearing down on her, of a man with an impressively bushy beard. He and his beard looked like they’d been around a good hundred or more years ago. The ornate frame seemed a little extravagant beside the austere expression on its bearded subject, who, Yuki assumed, must be an early pioneer of psychic thought. He sat stiffly, both hands flat along the arms of his chair, and stared off into the distance, as if daring the people who passed by to rouse him from his beardy thoughts.
From their website Yuki knew she’d have to sign in before being shown the photographs, so as soon as she and the woman behind the desk had said Good morning she was glancing around for some form or aged ledger and the pen with which to fill it out. But the receptionist insisted on knowing the nature of Yukiko’s visit. Yuki apologised and fished about in her pocket for the piece of paper on which she’d written the words she knew she’d have trouble pronouncing, and slid it across the counter.
‘SPIRIT PHOTOGRAPHS’, it read.
The receptionist read the note, nodded and asked Yuki to confirm that she actually wanted to see the photographs. Well, of course I want to goddamn see them, Yuki thought. Why the hell else would I be here?
Yes, said Yuki. To see them.
So the receptionist was obliged to inform her that the photographs were in the institute’s collections and that visitors had to make an appointment if they wanted to have access to the Collections Room.
It took a few moments for Yukiko to understand what the woman was saying.
But I’ve come from Japan, she said. Which was true. She had indeed come from Japan. Admittedly, not just to visit the Institute of Psychic Studies: she had also come to spend some time with her long-lost, condescending sister. But there was no denying her having come from Japan. If her English had been better she might have said, I am a Scholar. Or even, I am a Psychic Detective. Very well known in Japan and many other countries around the world.
But the receptionist insisted that Yukiko would need an appointment with Mr Fields, the Head of Collections, in order to see the photographs. She asked Yuki if she would like her to consult the diary and see if such an appointment might be made. Yuki said she would. The receptionist opened up a great slab of a diary, slid her finger down the page and seemed almost disappointed to find that there was a slot available the following morning. Yuki was asked if she’d like to take it. She nodded and made a mental note of it. Then turned and prepared to go clattering back across the tiles, when the receptionist stopped her.
You know, she said, you’re more than welcome to visit the library. You don’t need an appointment to go in there.
So Yuki followed the receptionist’s directions and found her way through to the library. As she entered, a woman who was returning some books to the shelves turned and looked over, and Yuki thought she might have to endure another little interview, but the librarian just smiled and nodded, then turned back to the shelves.
The room was tall and long, reaching off in both directions, and, like the rest of the institute, felt damp and somewhat neglected. Dark wooden shelves covered all four walls clear up to the ceiling, which was about three times Yuki’s height. The floor was covered with threadbare rugs and carpet and there was a faint smell of tobacco smoke.
For a while Yukiko drifted up and down, trying to make sense of the various categories which were written out on small cards and attached to the shelves at regular intervals, wondering at the sheer number of damp old books on show. They must have had to reinforce the floor, she thought. With steel. Or concrete. She advanced and allowed her finger to trail along the books’ spines – click, click, click – thinking as she did so, Perhaps my mum called in here when she paid a visit and trailed her finger along the very same books.
After she’d wandered around at floor level for several minutes and pulled out five or six books from the shelves she thought she’d like to explore the library’s upper reaches. She’d noticed a set of wooden steps with a post standing proud of the top step and small metal wheels at the bottom of one pair of its legs. She went over, climbed the first few steps and picked over a couple of shelves, just to see how much the thing was liable to wobble. Then resolved to move the whole contraption a metre or two, in order to get to some of the more interesting-looking volumes above her head.
It wasn’t clear where she was meant to take hold of the ladder, or how to shift it. She sensed that the librarian, wherever she’d got to, was monitoring the situation – that this was a test of Yuki’s initiative and that her performance might well have a bearing on how much deeper into the establishment she’d be permitted to go. So she gamely took hold of the steps and tried to shunt them, but only rucked the carpet in small folds beneath its legs and it took Yuki a while to work out that she should go round the other side and tip the vertical posts towards her, bringing the wheelless legs up off the floor to allow a little movement. The wheels squeaked as she shuffled backwards, pulling the steps after her. She had to keep glancing over her shoulder to check she wasn’t about to hit a wall or knock some potted plant off its pedestal. As long as I don’t actually pull the goddamned thing right over, she thought – as long as I don’t end up pinned to the floor beneath it, I shall consider it a success. And sh
e succeeded, in those terms at least, in dragging it into what looked like a more promising neighbourhood, set it down, then gave the whole thing a little jiggle, to check its steadiness, before finally climbing up the steps.
The books grew dustier and more obscure as she ascended. Many had been covered with transparent plastic, now grey and opaque with age. Some of the spines were held in place with ancient strips of tape. The titles didn’t make a whole lot of sense to Yuki, so she brought out her phone and consulted her English–Japanese dictionary. There were a fair number of ‘Paths’ and ‘Pathways’ in the titles. Also a good deal of ‘death’, along with its denial – as in ‘No to Death’ and ‘Death is Not the End’. The covers sometimes gave an indication of the content – a misty mountain top … a net curtain billowing in a window … geometric shapes which revealed themselves to be optical illusions – but nearer the ceiling the books grew dark and solemn, as if they considered illustrated covers a little frivolous.
Clutching the upright post, Yuki reached out and plucked two or three books from the shelves, quite randomly. A fine grey dust lay across the top of their pages. Inside their front covers a small rectangle of the institute’s own headed paper was glued to the right-hand page, and on it were stamped the dates on which the books had last been taken out: 10th May 1974, 2nd April 1966 and, in one instance, 25th June 1954. Yuki climbed to the very top of the wooden steps, her hand clamped around the wooden post, and felt as if she’d reached the threshold of some vague and dusty portal, tucked away beneath the ceiling’s flaking paint. For a moment she saw herself as if from a distance. This is where I am with my investigation, she thought. On the cusp of revelation, or quite possibly oblivion. Teetering on a half-built bridge.
*