Melody found herself opening the door and flicking on the light. Stephen jumped in his bed. Melody looked around the room. Stephen was alone. Even the windows were shut as they had been since she’d come on shift. She looked in the one wardrobe. Nothing but clothes and towels.
“Sorry Stephen,” she said.
Melody had been asleep. She must have imagined that voice. She checked the other rooms and all the residents were alone.
The voice had been so clear. It had woken her. None of the residents could speak. None of them could have said those words.
Vengence is yours, saith the Lord.
Melody knew her Bible. She went to True Vine in Derby with her housemates every Sunday, and she knew that verse was wrong. Vengence is mine, sayith the Lord.
In the space between dreaming and waking, she must have imagined the misquote. Melody went back to the office and didn’t fall asleep again. She watched the intercom, but the only sounds that came from it where the noises made by the sleeping residents.
Eleven
He left the house after breakfast and strode across the fields towards Scarsdale. The morning sun bit the frost in unshadowed areas melting it. Dan was glad to escape the cloying atmosphere of the house. He’d chosen not to drive, partly because he wanted the exercise and partly because he fancied a couple of pints at lunchtime.
Dan had calmed down overnight. Several glasses of Alison’s whiskey had helped and they’d talked until late. Late being 10:00 p.m. when Alison went to bed.
His stress levels had risen for a different reason when Beverly had rung to discuss the funeral arrangements. She insisted on coming up the Derbyshire from London for the funeral. He’d then dropped the bombshell that he wasn’t going. This had started an argument, the opening volley coming from Bev. “But she’s your mother!” Then she’d wanted to talk about why he didn’t want to go. He’d never talked to her about his childhood, the abuse, the religious madness he’d suffered. He wasn’t about to start now over a bad line on a mobile phone. She always wanted to talk about things, unearth the past and get all head-counsellor about it. Dan had buried the past, escaped from it and moved on.
The conclusion to the discussion came when she set a date to come up and talk about it. Dan didn’t relish the idea of Beverly being here, disturbing the rapidly evolved cosy routine he, Alison, and Lindsey had. She’d interfere, nitpick. Alison would be polite and professional as always while his bossy fiancé did what she did best; boss.
Perhaps he should dump her over the phone or by text. Say he wanted a break from the relationship and cite grief as the reason. No, if he did that, she’d drop everything and be straight up to talk him around.
She was coming up next week. He still had a few days of relative piece.
He was due to meet Herbert Slade, Scarsdale’s only solicitor, to read the will today. He wondered how much money he was due from Diane. He might even pop into the estate agents and book an evaluation on the house while he was here. Dan felt good that he’d be coming into a load of money. He might even have enough to put a deposit on a house down south, buy a new telly. But Beverly would want him to use it to help out with the wedding. His heart sank at the thought of that.
Dan reached the path through the trees and heard the sound of rushing water. He remembered a few nights ago. The man on the bridge, the weird singing. In the sanity of daylight, he wondered if he’d just imagined it. Or the man had been some sort of local nutter.
He crossed the footbridge that spanned the gushing white water flow that bounced over the grey rocks and then passed through the alley that cut between two red-brick terraced houses, emerging onto the steep main street of Scarsdale. Cars buzzed up and down the high street. A bus bound for Belper, according to its frontal display, groaned up the hill.
He crossed at the light and tuned down another alley where Slade’s office was almost kept hidden. He opened the door and was faced with a set of stairs. A teenage receptionist sat at a desk in the low-ceilinged upstairs reception area. She asked Daniel to wait as she disappeared into a back office and returned saying that Mr. Slade would only be a couple of minutes.
Dan sank back onto the leather sofa glad to take the weight from his legs. Eventually, Slade appeared.
Slade was an old man, in his seventies at least, and wore a bow tie and half-moon glasses. With a smile and a firm handshake, he gave his condolences and ushered Dan into his office.
This room was larger. Slade sat behind an expansive, oak desk with a computer screen to the left. He spoke in a diluted regional accent with a familiarity that made Dan feel slightly uncomfortable.
“You went to school with my lad, Richard, didn’t you?” Slade said as he sat down. Dan sat on the chair opposite.
“Yes. We were in the same year,” Dan replied. “How’s he doing?”
“He’s living in Cambridge. He’s a lecturer in economics now. You’ve done well for yourself, haven’t you? You work with computers.”
“I.T. sales. It’s not that glamorous.”
“My condolences on your loss, by the way. I imagine you’ll want to know what Mrs. Hepworth has left you.”
“And my sister. I need to know if she’s provided for Lindsey.”
“Yes, her disabled daughter.”
Dan tensed on hearing this. It was common for people to objectify Lindsey in this way, and he’d not really expected any better from this guy. He let it pass. Slade took out a folder and peered in until he found a piece of paper.
“You won’t mind if I paraphrase, will you? This is yours to keep.” He gestured to Dan with the piece of paper. “So. Diane Hepworth has left Lindsey Hepworth the sun of twenty thousand pounds and her son, Daniel, that’s you, ten thousand pounds.”
Dan had expected her to leave him a bit more than that. Her and his father had been saving for decades. Still, ten thousand pounds, a house, and never having to see this place again was a bargain. Slade handed him the piece of paper.
“And the house. Me and Lindsey get the house, right?”
Slade reddened slightly. “Er…well…no. The house and its contents have been left to the Scarsdale Evangelical Alliance.”
Dan looked down at the words on the paper and felt every muscle tighten in his body. Widdowson. The Evangelical Alliance was Widdowson’s church. She’d left the lot to Widdowson.
“Bitch,” said Dan out loud.
“I’m sorry?”
“She’s left the house to Widdowson. I don’t believe it.”
“She didn’t discuss this with you beforehand?”
“We didn’t speak much. This takes the fucking piss, this does.”
Slade reddened slightly. Dan was too angry to care. Lindsey would effectively be homeless, and he’d have to negotiate full-time care for her at Willow House, but that didn’t matter for now. What smarted the most was that Widdowson would benefit. Widdowson didn’t deserve this windfall.
Feeling a deep rage rise within him, he stood up. He had to get out of this office. He had to get out of this fucking town and scream somewhere.
“Did she settle up with you?”
“Yes, she’d paid all my fees upfront.”
“Then that concludes our business. Thank you,” Dan said more abruptly than he’d meant to and left the office.
The chapel stood away from the road, flanked by a hardware shop and an old Victorian factory. At the back of the chapel was a small graveyard and the fields beyond. It was right at the end of the town, on the road leading out towards Matlock.
Dan wanted to burn it to the ground. Even with it done up, the building gave him the shivers; the arched doorway, the twin spires, the red brick.
He hated Widdowson more than ever. The other day, when he’d visited, he’d known. He’d known all along. Dan was glad he’d sworn at him. Let the bastard know how much he hated him. Not that men like that cared what other people thought of them. If only there was a way to let his congregation know, let them know what an evil psychopa
th their man of God really was. What a pervert, what a…a…words failed him.
Rage turned to despair. He actually felt like crying at the injustice of it all. Returning here had stirred up so much shit from his past. Things he’d successfully buried. Down in London he worked, watched football, played football, lived a normal life. He enjoyed life, generally. Like a man set free from prison, he never looked back. He never thought about any of this. It didn’t haunt him, he’d survived. Now, it was all coming back.
He wondered if he should “accidently” burn the house down. The open fire in the lounge could spark onto the carpet and start a fire. He’d make sure he and Alison were out. Lindsey would be at Willow House. This idea cheered him up slightly.
The time was 12:30. He needed a drink so he headed up to The Lamb to drown his sorrows.
He sat at the bar, his gaze flicking between Facebook on his phone and the sport channel on the big screen above the bar. Soon after his first pint, Karl Prentice walked through the door. He was without Billy and Mooey. His lank hair fell over his glasses as he joined Dan at the bar. Dan bought him a pint and he moaned to Karl about his predicament. Karl was non-committal and commiserated with him on his loss.
Dan decided to change the subject. For some reason, he wanted to ask Karl about the apparition he’d seen at the footbridge. Billy and Mooey would just take the piss, but he got the feeling Karl wouldn’t. He was more sensitive than the others. Dan remembered he read a lot. At school, he was always reading. Sci-fi or history books.
Dan decided to tell him about the man on the bridge and the weird singing. When he finished the story, he asked, “So, is there a local nutter with a bald head living in Scarsdale?”
“Loads,” laughed Karl. “None of them wear a purple robe though. Anyone odd sticks out a mile here. They’d be noticed, but I’ve never heard of anyone like that hanging around. So, you say he was halfway across the bridge and you turned away, turned back and he was gone? I don’t think he’d be able to move that fast back across the bridge.”
“I was a bit pissed. Time and memory got a bit hazy.”
“You might have seen a ghost.” Dan was about to take another slug of his pint but was struck still by Karl’s comment. He wasn’t joking? No, he’d really meant what he’d just said. “There are no records of anyone falling from that footbridge. It was built in 1832 but had been repaired and replaced since then. It’s likely someone fell and killed himself and you might have seen his ghost. Who knows?” He took a sip of his pint and frowned, conjuring memory. “There’s been no reports of any ghost sighting in Scarsdale itself and certainly none by the footbridge. “
“So, you believe in this stuff?”
“I believe in ghosts.”
“Have you ever seen any?”
“Funny you should ask. I have, and very recently too. Went on a ghost hunt a few days ago up to St. Vincent’s. Me and a couple of mates from my history group. Not even the security guards go near that place, you know? I was talking to Greg Wise who runs the security firm a couple of nights ago. His guys are shit scared of the place. So, we decided to do some investigating. We went in through the side entrance, set up cameras, electromagnetic sensors, sound recorders, and even put talcum powder on the floors.”
“What happened?”
“Well, you can feel the atmosphere of the place. In some places, it’s like the walls are screaming at you. Doors slammed. Doors we’d left open were shut when we came back to them. I heard someone walking down one of the corridors and thought it was one of the security guards come in after all. It wasn’t.” He took a sip of his pint. “I saw a child. A girl. She walked past me, stopped, looked right at me, and walked through a wall.”
“Bloody hell.”
“That wasn’t all. In the middle of the whole complex is a massive room. Like a performance hall. All three of us were getting really jumpy readying to leave. It was three in the morning and we heard singing from this room. Like a load of voices singing. I say singing, the voices were, well, off key, almost like a cross between moaning and singing, some screeching. Ever heard Diamanda Galas?”
“No.”
“She’s this Greek opera singer, screams a lot. She can make really strange noises with her throat. The closest thing I’ve heard to what I heard that night was one of her records. Kind of sounded like that but worse. We went down there and the door to the hall was shut. We could hear it, but we couldn’t open the door. It had been open when we went in there. We should have recorded it, but we were so freaked out by the whole thing we just didn’t think. And it happened quite quickly too. The noise went on for about two minutes then stopped.”
“Someone was winding you up.”
“We were alone in there, Dan. No one else entered that building after us. You know I said we put talc down in certain places? We’d put it down in front of all the entrances and exits. It was all undisturbed apart from one place. On the way out, something had disturbed the talcum powder. They’d written in it.”
Karl showed him his phone. A grainy picture of white powder on a concrete floor. Written in the talc was one word.
CHOIR
The afternoon turned into evening. Mooey and Billy arrived. Billy was in a better position to understand than Karl. They had a shared past. Talking to Karl had been a refreshing experience, and Dan had underestimated quite how intelligent Karl actually was. He again wondered why the guy was wasting his time in a shithole like Scarsdale and hadn’t gone to uni.
“I’m not surprised,” said Billy. He potted two reds. Dan had failed to pot any as he was pretty drunk. “Diane was in his grip. She was totally devoted to him, but you know that. He’s a slippery bastard. Do you remember Darren King?”
“Yeah. He was always getting in trouble at school. Him and his gang gave me a wedgie once.”
“Darren King works for him. For nothing. King hates him. King went to prison for assault. When he got out, Widdowson offered him voluntary work. He took Widdowson up on his offer. When Darren got a job, Widdowson had a word with Detective Inspector Gould and, rumor has it, Gould said he’d fit him up if he didn’t work for Widdowson. He’s used Gould before to put people away he didn’t like. He’s a nasty bastard. Best thing you can do is just leave. Take Lindsey down south and don’t come back here.”
“But he doesn’t deserve the house.”
“Don’t fight him,” warned Billy. “He’ll make your life a misery.”
Dan felt his spirits sink. “I was thinking of burning the house down. Making it look like an accident.”
“He’ll know it wasn’t. He’ll get you framed for arson or something. Just leave it, mate.”
“I called him a Bible fucker,” Dan slurred drunkenly. “At least I did that.”
“Really?” said Billy. “I can’t imagine he’ll let that go. I’d watch myself if I were you.”
“But…you know. All that stuff. When I was a kid. He could do it to someone else.”
“Dan, you’re upsetting yourself.” Billy moved in closer to Dan. Tears were welling up in Dan’s eyes and he felt himself swaying slightly. The others were at the bar, not looking at the corner where the pool table was. “There’s fuck all we can do about it. Someone will stop him one day, but it won’t be us.”
Dan vomited in a hedge down the lane then carried on. He had double vison from the amount of alcohol he’d drunk and he hoped he kept his footing on the bridge. He could hear the rushing water as he approached the footbridge.
He tried to focus on the bridge ahead. It appeared to be empty. If the bald stranger wanted to appear tonight, he’d have a wasted journey because Dan was so pissed, he could hardly tell what was real and what wasn’t. Thankfully, the full moon illuminated the scenery, and he made it across the bridge and staggered through the woods.
He stopped and leaned against the trunk of the tree. He felt like he might be sick again, retched a couple of times, but didn’t. He needed to keep going. At this rate, he might re
ach One Farm Road by dawn.
A figure to his left swam into his vison. All he could focus on were the pair of dark, pitted eyes staring out from the round, pale face. This time the ghost was standing there, simply staring. Dan stared back.
“Can I help you, pal?”
He continued to stare.
“What do you want? Trying to scare me? Is that it?” No answer. “Fuck off. Fuck the lot of you, fucking shits.”
He moved off, stopped, and looked back. The man was still there, simply looking at him. Dan turned back again.
“What do you want?” Dan shouted so loud his voice echoed through the trees.
“I’ve not come for you,” the stranger replied in a crisp, clear, almost Shakespearian voice. “I’m here for your sister.” The man pointed north, in the direction of the house
Dan tried to process what he’d just said. What was this guy talking about? He followed the line of his finger. When he looked back up, the stranger had gone.
Shelley
From the window of the meeting room Ann could see the clock tower rising through the trees. A group of patients were being escorted from the single storey squat wards to the day centre across the lawn. Some of them were being wheeled, others were walking. One of the patients being wheeled, Desmond, was carrying his radio as he always did. Pop hits from Radio 1 were blasting out, Duran Duran or one of those other new pop bands he liked. As long as it made Des happy, she didn’t mind him having the radio. The bright summer sun shone over the hospital and cheered Ann’s spirits slightly. Today’s meeting just had to resolve the situation. They had to act today, make a decision. She’d had to fight to get everyone here and now that they were here, they needed to take these issues seriously.
The meeting was chaired by Dr. Didi, an Indian GP who’d been looking after the patients since the new hospital, St. Brendan’s, had opened twenty years ago in 1968. He’d been instrumental in the project of taking people out of the old wards at St. Vincent’s and placing them here at St. Brendan’s. A more suitable home for people with learning disabilities than the old asylum. She hoped he would understand the need to act.
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