The whole room had changed. She used to have a horrible, white-framed hospital bed. Here, there was a high-tech profiling bed with aesthetically pleasing wooden head and foot boards. He saw a control by the side which must have worked the bed. Above, attached to the ceiling, he noticed single track over where she was sitting on the wheelchair which ran to the bed. A hoist T-bar hung from the ceiling. This was new. The ceiling track was part of the hoist mechanism that lifted Lindsey from the bed to the wheelchair, the hammock like sling hanging over the chair.
Lindsey’s diagnosis was cerebral palsy. She’d been disabled from birth. When she was being born something had happened to starve her brain of oxygen, resulting in brain injury. This had left her with limited and erratic limb movement and limited cognitive processing. Lindsey had never been able to walk, or even hold things properly in her hands, and had only a child’s understanding of the world, so doctors had told her mother. Lindsey couldn’t speak. She’d made a variety of noises indicating contentment, sometimes even joy. Other times, she just wailed. Sometimes she screamed. He wondered if she was pissed off or actually in pain. The idea of her being in pain had always upset him.
Dan pushed these thoughts aside. She seemed happy now and made an approving noise when she saw him. Her dark brown eyes fixed on him, and she laughed. Did she remember him? He hoped so.
“Linds. It’s me. Danny,” he said, putting the hold-all down. “How you doing, you gobshite? Eh? Eh? How you doing?” He tickled her sides like he used to, and she laughed like she used to. A hysterical no-holds-barred laugh. He’d forgotten he could make her laugh. Her hands moved, flexing and extending in time with her laughter. Her head moved almost manically, and he knew from her movements she was happy.
For a moment, all the bad memories left him. He looked around the room. It wasn’t like part of Diane’s old dark Queendom. The room was warm. There were pictures of landscapes and a poster of Bruce Willis on one wall and Sylvester Stallone’s Rambo on another. Diane would never have allowed this. The room sang of normality, even life and hope.
Some of Lindsey’s clothes reflected his mother’s taste and style, or lack of it. She wore an awful grey blouse and woolen skirt. Her hair looked awful, shaped into a bowl cut by her mother.
“Bloody hell, Linds, who cut your hair? A bowl salesman? Don’t worry, sis, I’ll get ’em for you.”
From the doorway, he noticed movement. Dan turned to see a woman in a nurse’s uniform standing respectfully. She had bobbed blonde hair and bright blue eyes. Her physique filled the uniform. This was a voluptuous woman, he noticed, but not unattractive. His eyes wandered to the angles of her full bust before he caught himself and blasted her a smile.
“Sorry Mr. Hepworth. I didn’t know you’d come in here. Alison Coombs. I’m Lindsey’s caregiver.”
He thrust his hand forwards and they awkwardly shook hands. She must have been around his age but gave off the impression of an age gone by. She reminded him of a nurse from the fifties for some reason. One of those from Call the Midwife or something.
“I’ve put you some supper by. I was about to get Lindsey ready for bed. I’ll dish you out some food. Beef stew. I hope that’s okay.”
“Yeah. That’s great. I didn’t expect to be fed. I only managed to grab a sandwich back at St. Pancras. I didn’t expect her to be here. I thought Lindsey would be in respite. What with everything that happened recently.”
“She only goes to Willow House two days a week. I’ve been fine looking after her here. May I give you my condolences again, Mr. Hepworth?”
Dan cringed slightly. She was beginning to sound like one of the servants from Downton Abbey now.
“Yeah. Thanks.”
“I’ll just dish out your supper.”
When she left, he leaned down to Lindsey. “Don’t worry. We’ll sort her out, eh Linds?” He kissed her on the forehead and followed Alison to the kitchen.
“So, how long have you been in the job?” he asked as she dished out the stew. The kitchen hadn’t changed. An old cooking range, a square Belfast sink, a wooden unvarnished table, and an air of dampness.
“I’ve been an in-home nurse for eleven years. I’ve been here for one.”
“And you live in?”
“Yes. Mrs. Hepworth didn’t tell you?”
“We didn’t talk much.” She laid the bowl before him with a crust of bread. “We didn’t get on.”
She was too polite to pry. “I’ve got the spare room upstairs. I’ve a monitor in case Lindsey needs anything during the night. And I turn her every two hours. She’s got a good pressure mattress, but it doesn’t totally eliminate pressure risk, hence the need to turn regularly.”
“Right.” Daniel just pretended to know what she was talking about. “What happened to the other one? Jackie? She was Lindsey’s caregiver before.”
Dan disliked Jackie intensely. She was one of Diane’s churchgoers. A real harridan who used to pull Lindsey about like she was a piece of meat. There was no hoist back then and Lindsey was kept in bed, apart from when she went to church in that creaking red wheelchair.
“Her back gave out. She would insist on lifting the patients. Last I heard, and I shouldn’t say this, she was the centre of an investigation where she works now.”
“Really?”
“She’d been accused of neglect of one of her patients. Over at an old people’s home in New Scarsdale, up near St. Vincent’s. She was starving one of them apparently and there was a catalogue of medication errors. She’s not looked after Lindsey for years. Mrs. Hepworth wanted Lindsey kept at home. She was at the Willow House full time for a few years until Mrs. Hepworth found me. Or rather, I found her. Lindsey, I mean. More bread?”
Dan thought that was a slightly odd thing to say and wondered if Alison was religious. She didn’t have the puritanical stench of Diane’s old crowd, but that didn’t rule her out.
“You look tired,” said Alison.
“It’s been a long day.”
“I’ve got your room ready.”
“My old room?”
“Yes.”
Shit, he thought. I hated that room.
Dan had forgotten quite how much he hated this house. The stairs still creaked as he walked up them, just like they always had. When Dan was a kid, he used to hear them creaking on their own when he was in bed, like some invisible being were mounting the stairs. A hot flush of fear shot up his spine thinking about it.
The walls were covered in faded woodchip wallpaper up here and the stairs curved left up to the landing. He arrived on the tight landing. His mother’s room was to the left, a door leading up to the attic faced him, and his room waited for him on the right. Further along the corridor was the spare room he assumed Alison must be sleeping in and the bathroom. The dark oak-panel door wedged shut in its frame and bulged with age and dampness. Diane hardly ever had the heating on in this house as if suffering cold in winter were character building or, in her words, faith enhancing. He was sure he’d heard her say that once.
He gripped the handle and pushed the stiff, bloated door open. He swore that fresh cold air met his face. The bed and tall wardrobe were just dull shapes in the murk. He hit the light switch and the bare bulb illuminated the room with pale, unwelcoming light. A single bed lay width ways across the bare floor. A worn rug and a bedside table were really the only features in this room.
Satan will take your soul. He shook the vocal memory out of his head.
On the bedside was a Bible. This was the only recent addition to this room. Dan just knew Diane had left this here, knowing he’d have to return one day and it would be waiting for him. In her desperate Christian mind, she probably thought he would read it now that he was a man and suddenly see the light. Yeah, well that would never happen.
He let his bag and coat drop to the floor and reached for the Bible.
“You can fuck off for a start,” he said to the book. Dan pulled back the heavy drapes of the one win
dow in the room and unstuck the metal window latch. He had to use quite some force to bend up the handle on the side of the window, but he managed it. Cold air from the hills hit his face, and he leaned out of the window and threw the Bible in a wide arc into the air. Dan was just about to close the window when something caught his vision.
The steep crest of the nearest hill was silhouetted against the lights from the town, casting an orange glow onto the fast-moving clouds above. He peered deeper into the gloom, eyes adjusting to the dark.
At the very edge of the field, he saw movement. Someone was down there. A figure appeared to be waiting, the dark shape of a man framed against the orange clouds. He strode down the incline of the field then disappeared out of sight into the darkness.
Dan thought it strange someone would be so far out in the countryside at this time of night. He wondered if the figure had been watching the house.
A yell from downstairs caused him to jump. It was Lindsey laughing. Beyond his door, he heard the stairs creak. He opened the door, but there was no one there. Just a dark landing, black-painted stairs leading down. As a child, he’d hide under the covers when he heard it.
“Fucking place,” he said to himself. He pulled his shoes off and laid back on the bed. Silence suffocated the house now. Somewhere, a clock ticked, and somewhere else, wood creaked. Sleep overcame him, and he pulled the sheet over himself to ease oblivion.
Inside, the asylum the air seemed to freeze. The muffled chime of a Scarsdale church clock struck three times.
“What the hell was that?” cried Kieran.
“A bloody church bell. Will you stop freaking out? For fuck’s sake.” Fiona could openly be rude to Kieran as she’d known him longer than Karl had.
They’d set up collapsible camping chairs in the main corridor downstairs. All of them were on edge. Karl was worried Kieran might be losing it. He was a Uni mate of Fiona’s and had taken the piss out of the whole psychic phenomena thing from the start. If they hadn’t needed him to set up the equipment, Karl would have asked him not to come. He was sitting rubbing his hands nervously, jumping round at every sound the old building made. Karl’s sighting had scared Kieran more than it had scared Karl.
Karl stared into the light of the electric lamp, contemplating. Until this evening, he’d believed there was a rational explanation for everything. Even ghosts. He’d always gone as far as calling them impressions because that’s what he solidly believed them to be. That belief ended the moment that child had looked right at him upstairs. What he’d seen walk through the wall had been conscious. Was it then the spirit of a dead person? Did they live on in the shadow of their lives, literally haunting where they had died? In that case, there must be an afterlife. That pulled all the stops out. Everything was on the table now. Was there a God? A Satan?
He no longer knew. All he knew was that from now on, anything was possible.
“What the hell was that?”
It was Fiona who spoke up this time. Karl had almost blanked out Kieran’s regular surprised cries every time they heard a noise. They fell silent, listening.
From behind the closed door of the concert hall, they heard what, at first, sounded like a strangled cry. The sound was joined by another disharmonious wailing. The sound grew in intensity until a full chorus of disjointed vocal undulations came through loud and clear from behind the door.
“There are…people…ghosts…” stammered Kieran, “…they’re singing.” All three were standing now, listening to the sound. Accompanied by the singing was a deep, subsonic vibration that shook the lantern.
“Fuck this, I’m leaving,” announced Kieran.
“Go on, then.” Karl didn’t even look at Kieran as he said this. He kept his gaze forwards, staring at the shut door. “I’m going nowhere.”
Nigel
He sat cross-legged on the wide chair next to the metal-framed bed. He didn’t hear her enter because his ears were just sealed stubs against the side of his head. He didn’t see her because one eye was unable to open, the eyelid permanently closed over a hollow space. The left eye was absent, simply a hole in his head, a flesh-cave almost a centimeter deep and two centimeters wide. His thin agile limbs had full range of movement but when he stood unaided, his lack of natural balance caused him to fall. Nigel liked to sit with his legs folded under him as he was now and his fingers twisting through his hair as he murmured contentedly. In the hallway, the latest hits from Kylie and Yazz played from the radio in the office, but he couldn’t hear them.
“Don’t think you’re going to sit there all night, you little bastard!” she spat. She had a garish, local accent which gave a nasty cadence to every vowel and consonant. Of course, Nigel didn’t hear her. “Spitting your food out, smearing your shit so I have to clean it up. It’s shower time for you, you little shit.”
Her fat fingers grabbed his hair. The shock of suddenly being grabbed like this caused his arms and legs to shoot out into full extension, propelling his body up from the chair. His hands flew up to cover his head, but his grip and his strength were no match for hers.
“Get up. Get up, you useless bag of shit!” She pulled him sharply from the chair. His feet tried to find purchase on the floor but failed, and his frame collapsed. He screamed, a high-pitched whine of distress.
“No use screaming. Fucking hell, you sound like a little girl.” The woman dragged him along the floor by one arm as he screamed relentlessly, limbs thrashing in pure blind panic. She dragged him out of the ward and along the corridor then stopped. She let go of his arm, letting him drop to the floor. In terror, he bit into his hand. He always bit his hand when distressed. His hands were scarred from a lifetime of oral self-harm. Nigel’s few remaining teeth, four frontal teeth and two molars in his lower jaw, bit deep and drew blood.
“You can pack that in now,” she yelled. “Pack it in!”
He continued to bite.
“I said pack it in!” She smashed him across his head with the back of her hand, her rings on her fingers catching his temple.
From the office at the end of the corridor, a man stepped out wearing a pale tunic, the uniform of a staff nurse.
“Shouldn’t he be in bed?” said the man.
“Shit his self at dinner, Morris. I’m teaching this bastard a lesson. Midnight shower.”
“Yeah, well,” the man said. “Keep it down, eh Jackie? Close the door. I don’t want the others waking up.”
“Will do, Morris.” She reached down and grabbed his hair again, pulling him into the darkened shower room. She lifted him into the shower chair, and he began screaming again. The woman took four towels from the cupboard and secured his hands and feet to the plastic shower chair. Nigel was too weak to escape. He lacked the ability to undo the crude knots of the towels. She pulled the wheeled shower chair under the wide, gleaming head of the shower. Seconds dragged before the freezing water erupted from the shower head and hit his skin.
Nigel screamed louder and with more desperation than he had done previously. The woman closed the door and stood with her arms folded.
“Let’s see how long you can stay under that, you shit-arsed little cunt.”
Five
Dan pulled the curtains wide and met a low-winter sun rising in the East, filtering scarlet rays across the hills and through the bare branches of the trees. Fishing a jumper from his bag, he darted into the bathroom opposite to splash cold water over his face. He was dreading having a bath here. The house was cold and the boiler was probably so out of date it was obsolete. He looked to the big white bath with distain. Lindsey had a walk-in shower downstairs. Maybe he’d use that. It would be quicker.
The happy chattering of his sister drifted from downstairs. Dan pulled on the trousers he’d worn yesterday and went down to meet the nurse and his sister.
He found Alison in Lindsey’s bedroom, dressing her. Lindsey was laying in the bed, eyes rolling with what looked like wonder, hands moving slowly and continuously as they us
ually did.
“Morning,” said Dan. “Can I do anything to help?”
“Morning, Mr. Hepworth—sorry, Dan. Could you pass me the sling?”
He fetched the folded shiny material hammock-like sling from the chair and handed it to her. She was busy lowering the ceiling track hoist, the T-bar hanging from the belt didn’t look strong enough to take the weight of a human.
“If you could help me get the sling around her,” said Alison. “I can do it on my own but it just takes longer.” She took hold of Lindsey’s shoulders and left buttock. She rolled her to one side and Dan uncertainly took the sling. He knew it needed to go under her but couldn’t work out how it was possible. Alison saw his frown of confusion.
“Fold one side, sort of roll it on itself.” He did as he was told. “Now put it under her, as far as you can get it.”
Dan lined it up against his sister’s spine and gently shoved it under her. Alison let her go and she rolled flat on her back.
“Now you take her shoulder and hips and roll her your way.” He gently pulled her, like she was a china doll that would break at any moment. Alison deftly took the side of the sling he’d just rolled and pulled it out until it was under her and she lay on her back again on top of it. Alison lowered the T-bar and attached the four loops to the hooks then took the controls. Lindsey lifted from the bed in this smooth hammock, and once she was high enough, the hanging belt moved sideways from the tracking above, from the bed and over to the wheelchair where Lindsey was lowered down. Alison asked Dan to steady her feet during this procedure.
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