by Will Maclean
I stared down at the lawn, sudden hot tears in my eyes. Why would he single me out like that? What right did he have? To declare that Abi was dead? I felt like punching him, in the same way I’d punched Cliff Lang, wildly and without restraint, until he sobbed. I immediately decided to confront him about this after the meeting, whilst at the same time knowing I never would.
‘With that in mind,’ Graham went on, ‘if anyone wants to stop the session at any point, just tell me or Sally, and we’ll stop, OK? Juliet?’
Juliet looked up at Graham anxiously. ‘Yes?’
‘I know you found that first session somewhat … trying.’
‘Yes, but that was just the – I mean, nothing’s happened since then, has it?’
‘No. But I need you to be prepared in case something does.’
Juliet nodded slowly. ‘I’ll be fine. It just freaked me out the first time, that’s all … Really, Graham. I’m fine. I want to participate.’
‘Are you sure?’
Juliet nodded.
‘OK then,’ said Graham. ‘The last thing I want is for any of you to feel uncomfortable.’
And so, my second ever séance took place in the early afternoon, at roughly the same time as my first. Graham made us sit in the same places as before, round the table, only this time we were not to hold hands. Graham had something different in mind. He rummaged in his Gladstone bag and unfolded a large board on which the letters of the alphabet were carefully printed, as well as the words YES and NO. He then produced a heart-shaped piece of wood, on tiny castors, and set it down on top of the board.
‘This,’ said Graham, ‘is a planchette. The idea is, we all place our fingertips on it, and the pointer at the end there will move to letters, spelling out words.’
‘Where on earth did you get that?’ asked Seb.
‘I made it,’ said Graham, as if that were the most normal thing in the world.
‘Well, shall we?’ said Sally. Her thigh, underneath the table, touched mine, and stayed there.
Polly wrinkled her nose. ‘It’s not a very séance-y day, is it?’
Graham’s brows furrowed with the humourless concentration he seemed to bring to everything. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Weather-wise.’ Polly gestured to the tall windows, where the morning sun had matured into a sweltering early June day, and was streaming, in ever-strengthening bars of brilliance, onto the blue carpet.
‘Is there appropriate weather for a séance?’ said Neil.
‘Don’t worry,’ said Sally. ‘It doesn’t matter. We’re going to draw the curtains and light candles, as before. Seb, will you do the honours?’
Seb made a face commensurate to being asked if he would donate a kidney. ‘If I must.’ He rose from his chair petulantly, drew the curtains closed, then lit the candles with his Zippo.
‘Anyway,’ said Sally, ‘strictly speaking this isn’t a séance. Just an attempt to see what’s out there.’
‘What, like … fishing?’ I said. ‘Dangling our lines over the side?’
‘Yes. Fishing, for long-dead souls,’ Sally said softly, and smiled. I smiled back.
Neil made a face. ‘Lord, this gets less scientific with every passing day.’
‘Let’s just do it,’ said Seb. For the first time since I had met them, Neil nodded in agreement. ‘What do we do?’
‘We’re recording, aren’t we?’ said Sally. Graham nodded. ‘OK. It’s Tuesday, the fourth of June, 1974. This is a mediumistic session using the planchette, and a printed alphabet. Present are myself, Sally Devonshire, and Graham Shaw. Also present are Tim Smith, Sebastian Stourton, Juliet Fields-Ray, Polly Rook and Neil Audle. Can I ask you all to place a finger onto the planchette?’
We did so. Seven arms reached across the table, like spokes in a wheel. Sally cleared her throat, then continued.
‘Can we ask any spirits present to make themselves known? Please excite the planchette if you can hear us.’
Under our fingers, the planchette stayed where it was.
‘Please make yourself known to us.’
Nothing.
‘What I like most about this,’ said Seb, ‘is how entirely un-foolish I feel doing it.’
‘Seb!’ hissed Juliet. ‘For God’s sake. Concentrate.’
‘Yes,’ said Seb. ‘I’d hate to break our incredible record of communicating with—’
Under our fingertips, the planchette trembled, then juddered across the table, to stop neatly at the word ‘YES’.
Even Seb was quiet then.
‘Is anyone there?’ breathed Sally.
The pointer juddered along the smooth wooden board, stopping at the letter S, then at the A, then the L.
‘Salt,’ breathed Juliet. ‘Oh my God! It’s him!’
‘Oh God!’ gasped Polly. The pointer did not move again, did not complete the word.
‘Excellent,’ said Graham, with rising excitement. ‘Excellent!’
Unbidden, the pointer moved, crawling slowly this time, to YES.
‘Tobias Salt,’ said Sally. ‘Is that you?’
The pointer, our hands on top of it, meandered over to the other side of the board, and NO.
‘What does he mean, no?’ said Seb. The planchette moved smoothly down the board towards the alphabet.
S-A-Y
‘Say what? Is there anything we can do for you?’
P-R-A-Y
‘Prayers?’ said Juliet. Underneath our fingertips, the pointer trembled.
YES
‘Say prayers. You want us to say prayers for your soul?’
I-N
‘In what? In Latin? Where are you?’
I-N-F-U-R-U-X
We all exchanged baffled glances. With his free hand, Graham wrote the letters down as the pointer moved.
N-O-N-O-P-U-S-I-T
‘We don’t understand,’ said Sally. Undeterred, the planchette continued to glide across the table, pointing patiently at individual letters. I remembered the gibberish Latin that the sitters had recorded at the Borley Rectory séances.
S-C-I-S-M-E
‘We don’t understand.’
V-O-S-N-O-N-S-C-I-T-I-S
‘Well, it’s not quite Latin,’ said Juliet, ‘apart from the last bit. Which means—’
S-A-L-T
‘Is that who you are? Tobias Salt?’
YES
‘He just said he wasn’t,’ said Seb. ‘He should make up his bloody mind.’
In response to this, the planchette jumped as if startled, and moved closer to YES. Seb laughed, although it was a nervous laugh. The planchette now seemed to be grinding its castors against the tabletop, as if it were a living thing, impatient for direction. A slight shiver of revulsion wormed its way up my arm.
‘Make yourself known to us!’ said Sally. Nothing and nobody moved. ‘Make yourself known!’ Again, there was silence.
‘Hey, Tobias,’ said Seb. ‘How’s it going? Sorry you killed your missus!’
The pointer froze, immovable, as if it were welded to the table. I looked up at everyone’s tense faces, the blood drained from them. Even Seb had stopped smirking now. A long moment passed.
‘Mr Salt?’ said Sally nervously. ‘Do you wish to make—’
From upstairs came a great crash, the sound of an enormous piece of furniture being thrown to the floor. It reverberated through the house, like a fist coming down on all the darkest notes of a piano keyboard.
Graham was on his feet first, staring up at the ceiling. ‘Good God!’
‘Whose room was that?’ said Juliet.
‘I think it was the landing,’ I said.
‘My room.’ Polly looked up fearfully, gripping her own forearm. ‘I think it was my room.’
‘Jesus Christ,’ said Seb. ‘My heart’s going like a hammer!’
‘That big dresser thing on the landing.’ Neil rubbed his glasses. ‘The one the size of Blenheim Palace. I bet it was that.’
Polly swallowed, her face pale. ‘There’s a grandfather clo
ck in my room.’
As a group, all seven of us trod warily up the creaking stairs, led by Graham.
In the colossal hallway, the great Welsh dresser stood undisturbed, all of the Pekin ware cups and saucers in their places, as they no doubt had been for years. I touched one of the teacups; my fingertip came back green with dust. Inside the teacup was a dead fly.
‘Well,’ said Neil, ‘it wasn’t the dresser.’
‘Nor the grandfather clock,’ said Polly, emerging from her room.
‘What else could it be?’
We searched our individual rooms. Everything in mine was just as I had left it. I returned to the landing, just as Juliet and Seb were emerging from their room.
‘Nothing amiss in our room,’ said Juliet.
‘Nor mine,’ said Neil. Sally shrugged too, and Graham.
Confused, we checked the bathrooms, the airing cupboard – even the wardrobes. Nothing had been disturbed.
‘It doesn’t make any sense,’ said Seb. There was a note of genuine wonder in his voice.
‘It makes perfect sense,’ said Polly. ‘It just doesn’t make a sense any of us are used to.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ Seb asked. ‘We all heard a crash. We come up here to find nothing’s moved. How can that possibly be?’
No one had an answer to that.
We headed back downstairs.
‘Maybe it was thunder,’ said Neil, leading the way back to the blue room. He pushed the door open. ‘Or some sort of atmospheric—’
I was at the rear of the group, and watched as everyone in front of me stopped and stared. And then I saw what they saw, and I stopped and stared too.
The seven chairs we had occupied had all been tipped backwards and were now lying flat on their backs on the floor. They appeared to have been laid out neatly and carefully, like the petals of a flower. There was, I suppose, a tiny chance that this could have happened by accident, and the chairs had somehow all fallen equidistant from each other, in an arrangement so precise, so deliberate, that it looked like the work of a conscious mind.
‘Did we … leave them like that?’ said Seb. His tone betrayed his lack of confidence in this explanation.
‘No,’ Polly said quietly. ‘No, we didn’t.’
A long interval passed. All that was audible was the spools of the tape recorder turning, and the ancient timbers of the house, cracking smugly, like knuckles.
29
We had been waiting for something, it seemed, without knowing quite what, and now that thing had finally occurred, there could be no going back. The energy of the house – or us, or both – seemed different, charged with potential.
Immediately afterwards, Graham made all of us go off alone into various parts of the house and write up our individual reports on what had just taken place, without conferring. Once we had submitted these reports, he came to interview us separately. Alone in my room, I found myself glancing around, as though some sly, unpleasant trick might be played on me, if I were not vigilant. It was almost a relief when Graham came to talk to me. I recounted what had occurred as faithfully as I could.
The interviews took the entire afternoon, and by the time we were allowed to speak to each other again, it was 6 p.m., and dinner time. According to the rota, it was my turn to cook, but thankfully Polly volunteered, saying she felt like doing something ‘normal’, and we were spared whatever horrors I would have cobbled together. After dinner, Graham magnanimously gave us the evening off to do as we pleased, but nobody was willing to be alone, and so we congregated naturally in the large lounge next to the blue room, with its just-about modern furniture. Graham vanished to work up his results, but Sally brought a teapot and mugs from the kitchen and poured strong tea for us all.
There was, inevitably, only one topic of conversation.
‘It was so loud!’ said Juliet. ‘And that thing with the chairs is the weirdest thing I’ve ever seen. Euurgh.’
‘It was horrible all right,’ said Polly, pouring the tea. ‘Like something did it on purpose.’
‘It was pretty weird,’ Seb agreed. His habitual confidence had temporarily left him, and he seemed genuinely rattled. ‘What do you make of it, Timbo?’
Again, I wished Abi were here. She would have a much clearer idea of what to think about all of this. What would she say, if she were here?
‘I’m not sure,’ I said.
‘What are you unsure about?’ asked Sally. She sat on the floor with her hand over the arm of my chair, and rested her head on the back of her hand to look at me.
‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I’m just concerned that in situations like this, it’s very easy to drift into a group delusion whereby we’re all convincing ourselves that something paranormal is happening. Both the Society for Psychical Research notes on this and Harry Price’s instructions to investigators at Borley Rectory bore this fact in mind.’ This was very much the kind of thing Abi would say. I felt suddenly almost breathless with sadness.
Sally smiled at me. ‘But you have to agree it was impressive. You do agree with that, don’t you, Tim?’ Her eyes sparkled up at me.
‘I do,’ I said.
‘Well then,’ she said, and sank back to the floor. ‘We all agree. We’ve had our first, genuine, psychokinetic event!’
‘Hurray,’ said Neil from the corner of the room, raising his tea mug. I realised he’d been very quiet all afternoon. Since we had seen the chairs, in fact.
‘Hurray!’ Seb, immune as ever to disquiet or nuance, raised his mug too. ‘To Mr Salt. Finally shaking a leg after all these years, the old bastard! Tobias Salt!’
‘Tobias Salt,’ we said, in untidy unison.
A peculiar spell of consensual quiet followed, filled with the expectation that the house might find the power to answer back. The house, however, answered with silence, the silence of the long corridors and the black, cavernous hall; the silence of the Victorian rooms as they sat over the scorched stones of the original wing, as they slumbered in the cold red earth. Somehow, this was a more effective, more chilling response than we had bargained for, and nobody spoke for a long time.
‘Can someone take me upstairs?’ Polly said quietly. ‘I don’t want to go up there alone.’ Strangely, she looked at me when she said this, her expression almost challenging.
‘I’ll take you, my love,’ said Sally. She got to her feet. Polly smiled politely and they headed for the door. ‘Goodnight, everyone.’
‘I think we’re going to turn in too,’ said Seb, standing and stretching. ‘I mean, what’s there to stay up for? You coming, Jules?’
Juliet laughed. ‘Rather than follow you upstairs on my own? Course I am.’ She padded over to the door. Seb grinned back at us.
‘Night, all. Don’t let the bedbugs bite. I mean, I’m sure Comprehensive is perfectly used to bed bugs, but the rest of us have higher—’
‘Just GO!’ snapped Juliet.
‘Goodnight, Seb,’ I said, smiling. He was very hard to dislike. He clattered into the corridor and up the stairs, Juliet following behind.
‘Well,’ said Neil, after the noise of Seb’s departure had finally ceased to reverberate. ‘What do you make of all this?’
I inhaled and exhaled very slowly.
‘I have no idea. It was creepy, for sure.’
‘I think we’re being tricked,’ Neil said simply.
I stared at him.
‘You probably have two big questions about that assertion,’ he said. ‘Let me deal with them in reverse order of importance. Question one – how were we tricked?’
‘You’re that sure that we were?’
‘Look at it this way. Either the laws of physics work, and are consistent and predictable in all cases or— Who’s that spoon-bending weirdo, the one who’s all over the telly? What’s his name?’
‘Uri Geller.’
‘Yes, him. You either believe he has uncanny powers that rip up all we know about the physical world, or you accept he’s doing a magic tric
k. It may be a very good trick, and even he might believe it’s real by this point, but it’s a trick nonetheless. Now. Which of those two explanations strikes you as the most likely?’
I nodded. Neil smiled.
‘And so, our hosts, Graham and Sally, arrange for a loud noise to go off upstairs. It leaves no physical traces, and we can’t find any evidence of it. That tells me it was probably made by the second tape recorder. The one we’ve been using to record the empty rooms.’
‘Are you sure? It was a very loud noise.’
‘Those things can make a huge racket if you want them to.’
Yes, I thought. Once you have eliminated the impossible, what remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth. I had grown up alongside someone who liked to play Sherlock Holmes. It irked me that, once again, I was to be Dr Watson.
‘But still, it sounded like a real noise rather than a recording.’
‘I agree. But we were all in a state of heightened awareness, all subconsciously scaring ourselves.’ Neil sipped his tea thoughtfully. ‘We are neither reliable nor objective witnesses.’
He was right. We were all too ready to turn any noise into something ghastly. But then, this explanation didn’t feel correct, as if it were too neat, too tidy. I raised my other objection.
‘How did it happen on cue, then?’
Neil snorted derisively. ‘Did it? Seb directed one of his trademark tedious needling comments to the planchette. Then there was a silence. Then, the crash, just as Sally was asking for a response.’
‘It did happen after she asked, though.’
‘Not after. It happened as she asked. Like she’d messed up the cue. Also, you’ll notice that everyone searched their own room afterwards. We haven’t seen inside Graham or Sally’s rooms at all. And Graham keeps the second tape recorder in his room.’
I was sad. It was exciting to be at the centre of paranormal phenomena, to be one of the chosen few to have experienced first-hand something otherworldly; something if not numinous, then at least holding the possibility of the numinous. It was not exciting to be duped.