by Syd Moore
‘I knew it,’ said Inspector Scrub as she flicked her notebook open. ‘This place, you two,’ she eyeballed me and Sam, ‘and those Forkers. There weren’t any way tonight was going to go without a hitch.’ And she asked Bronson to start at the beginning.
Once his statement had been taken down by Scrub, Bronson was led off by Neighbour Val, who I noted stuck her shoulder under his armpit and tucked his arm around her waist. Sam suggested they find the brandy in the office and both of them complied with relative enthusiasm, ignoring the titter from Audrey who was still hovering by the door.
‘What about you, Tone?’ Scrub asked. ‘Can you elaborate any further?’
‘I’m trying to think,’ he said and tapped his forehead on the side.
‘Don’t hurt yourself,’ Scrub said.
‘He was taller than me, by some height. I think he might have had a hat on, which kinda made him seem bigger. Maybe like a toff hat. No, what’s it called – a top hat,’ he said. The boy was trying hard. Maybe he was compensating for that stuff back in the summer with the break-ins and the flowers and the ghost and that. Long story. Whatever, something was working inside that closely cropped skullcap.
‘He was dark. The clothes were dark,’ Tone squinted. ‘There was swishing, like curtains opening suddenly.’
‘Good,’ said Sam. ‘You’re doing really well. Could it have been a cloak?’
Tone closed his eyes then nodded. ‘Could have been. The moon was just clouding over so I didn’t get a good look.’
I looked up at the sky. It was completely covered now. In fact, I could feel a drizzle starting in the air.
‘But there was light coming out of him.’ Tone went on shaking his head, dismissing the words with incredulity even as they tumbled from his mouth.
‘Light?’ I said and felt my eyebrows tug together. Quickly I put my fingers to my brow and smoothed them. You could end up with a permanently unflattering crease there, if you weren’t careful.
‘Yeah,’ Tone said, nodding slowly and pulled the recollection closer.
I pressed on, with a consciously unwrinkled forehead. ‘How? How was there light coming out of him.’
‘It was blue. Like flames,’ said Tone carefully.
‘Interesting,’ said Sam.
Scrub raised her eyebrows. ‘Really? Sounds suspicious to me.’
Sam nodded. ‘It’s remarkably similar to an urban legend from the nineteenth century: Spring-heeled Jack. Have you heard of him?’
We all shook our heads and waited for him to share his brains.
‘Started in the East End but actually did come down here to Essex,’ he began, tapping his chin as he spoke. ‘All over the country, in fact. He was said to be, by turns, a devil, a ghost, a demon, as Tone correctly asserted, and a bull!’
‘Sounds like bull,’ I muttered quietly.
‘What?’ said Tone. ‘Like a cow? It weren’t no cow, I can tell you that.’
‘No,’ said Sam and continued on. ‘Witnesses described him as being able to leap great distances.’
‘That’s true,’ said Tone.
‘He was alleged to breathe out blue flames and had claws for hands that he would attack people with. Some thought it was a hoax but there were multiple sightings from 1828 to 1904.’
It had grown quiet outside as Sam spoke and we all jumped as an owl hooted in one of the bordering pines.
‘He was shot at several times, but with no effect,’ Sam went on, his own voice dropping to a whisper as if he didn’t want to be overheard. ‘Some commentators believe Spring-heeled Jack was the rakish Lord Henry de la Poer Beresford, the third Marquis of Waterford. Certainly, the aristocrat had the means and mischievous nature to have the costumes made. He was spry too. Athletic. Of course, others believe Spring-heeled Jack was a paranormal creature, possibly an extra-terrestrial entity with a non-human appearance, who had slipped through a portal from a high-gravity dimension and was, therefore, less affected by the standard rules of physics on Earth.’
‘Ha ha ha ha ha.’
A low cackle echoed round the garden.
I tensed and surveyed the pines, the front wall, the fields to the Acton’s farm. There was no one there that I could see, though it was pretty hard to get clarity beyond the circle of illumination radiating from the sleigh.
‘Who’s that?’ said Scrub, looking up and down each side of the garden. She raised her voice higher. ‘Come out and show yourself.’
As if daring her, the laughter grew in volume, projecting through the trees across the expanse of garden. At once, from somewhere over our heads, there came a terrific whoosh and a large black thing dropped from the sky and hit the gravel beyond us.
Little pebbles flew up into the air, which seemed, just then, to crackle with electricity.
Then, to my utter astonishment the darkness was lit up by a burst of blue flame.
In that moment I saw the silhouette of a very, very tall figure who, as Tone had accurately described, was dressed in ghastly black robes – a tatty cape perhaps. I had little time to take much in because all at once it sprang up again, in a steep and graceful arc, that reached its apex above the front wall and then dropped down into the lane just as the street lights switched off.
Before you could say ‘council cutbacks’, Bobby Brown, whose reflexes were clearly also not of this world, raced down the path and out of the Witch Museum in hot pursuit.
‘Oh my God,’ said Chloe, who I had just realised was standing next to me, lightly holding the sleeve of my dress. ‘What the hell was that?’
Sam’s voice had become raspy. ‘If I’m not mistaken, that was Spring-heeled Jack.’
‘I told you,’ said Tone, his voice betraying a quiver.
Despite myself a shudder rippled down my spine.
‘That can’t be a demon,’ said Scrub and began to stalk towards the wall where the creature disappeared. ‘I won’t have it.’
I couldn’t see her face from this angle but I thought it likely that her eyes were narrowed to thin slits and her mouth screwed into a knot of absolute determination. It was an expression I had encountered in the past, as if her sheer force of will was going to unmask the ghostly form we’d all just witnessed and prove it completely un-demon-like.
‘Er, should we?’ Sam gestured towards the lane.
‘No,’ said Chloe. ‘He’s already coming back.’
And he was indeed. Bobby Brown and Scrub were jogging back to us.
‘IC1, I reckon,’ said Bobby Brown. ‘Caught a glimpse of white under a hood, in the facial area. Exceptional height, maybe eight feet.’
‘You sure?’ said Scrub.
Bobby nodded. ‘Do you want me to call it in?’
‘Mm,’ said Scrub and turned back to us. ‘We’ve got Bean and O’Neil here. Phone them.’
Bobby took his mobile out of his pocket and began to stab it when we all heard another whooshing sound.
Again everyone froze.
Scrub muttered, ‘You’re having a laugh.’
And, bang, the leaping black thing plopped down right next to Brown.
One had to admire the audacity.
Again there was a flash. A purpley, bluey flame, thinner this time. Then, I heard a light metallic tinkling and the spectre leapt up impressively, soaring over our heads, and landed, with a skitter, on the roof of the lobby.
‘Good God,’ exclaimed Sam.
‘Wages of sin!’ wailed Audrey, who was cantering out of the shadows to stare at our unearthly visitor along with the rest of us. ‘Your doing,’ she waved her finger at me. All that meddling with dark magic and witches, you have brought the demons in.’
Tone, who I had forgotten was here, spoke up. ‘Actually,’ he said. ‘It don’t really look like a demon now.’
And he was right. The thing on the roof was pretty humanoid in form, having two arms, a large torso and a head. Though said head did seem extraordinarily large and was crowned with, as Tone had correctly identified, a black top hat. Obscuring much of i
ts bulk was a flippy flappy floaty cloaky thing, from the bottom of which protruded two limbs that were unmistakably legs. Though they were, indeed, very long ones.
‘He’s got my phone!’ said Bobby. Muttering something I didn’t understand but which plausibly was a slew of international swear words, he made to sprint after the thing. Scrub however stayed him.
‘Hang about, Bobs,’ she said. ‘What goes up must come down. And look – left leg. Below the knee.’
Up on the roof, the creature could be seen in silhouette. The lower part of a ragged trouser leg had detached itself, gaping to reveal a glint of metal reflecting the flashing lights of the sleigh just beneath it. ‘Could that be a section of nifty aluminium stilt I see before me?’
‘It could indeed, ma’m,’ said Brown, straightening himself up.
The ‘demon’ gave a little bounce and giggled.
‘Jumping stilts! That would explain the giant leaps,’ agreed Sam.
I bent my ears to it and caught the scratchy coil and recoil of shunting springs. The sound was definitely not issuing from the creature’s heels but higher up around the calf and knee joint. Which, to my mind, confirmed it was a solid, man-made mechanism that was helping Master S.H. Jack achieve his astonishing height. I was no longer close-minded or discomfited when it came to the presentation of unusual phenomena, it was true, but the notion of demons from another dimension had played havoc with my comfort zone.
‘You,’ shouted Scrub at him, in her finest cease-and-desist-with-the-fuckwittery voice. ‘Return the phone at once.’
Again, a titter carried across the night air. The rooftop fiend spread its cloak, which I now saw had been designed to resemble two giant bat wings, and burped. Then rather unexpectedly, it broke into song:
‘With a skip and a leap of his spit-heeled boots,’ he trilled,
‘By night and stars across old London town’s roofs,
The folk do quake, the folk do quiver but the folk must watch their backs,
Because the beast’s behind you – he’s Spring-heeled Jack.’
A dramatic punctuation to the end of the verse was formed by a burst of blue flame, which issued from so-called ‘Jack’s’ mouth.
It was, if nothing else, spectacular, and prompted Chloe to give out a little cry. Sam gasped and began to clap. Audrey smirked at him and made a loud proclamation about the devil and his false prophet in lakes of burning sulphur.
But Scrub was unimpressed. ‘Very good. Now hand it over. It belongs to my officer friend here.’
But the joker on the roof went on unheeding, ‘Like a devil,’ it sang picking up on Audrey’s charming motif, and giving one of its legs a high kick. ‘Like a fiend, like a black angel …’
‘My POLICE officer, friend here,’ Scrub bellowed.
‘The ghostly spectre of . . . oh . . .’ the singer petered out, his voice now rather weakened by the revelation of agents of the law in the audience. ‘Police? Officer, you say?’ He was definitely human.
‘That’s right,’ said Scrub.
This had a further sobering effect on Mr Jack who said, ‘Oh,’ and tottered lightly down the sloping roof to the right-hand side of the lobby. ‘I didn’t realise there was such esteemed company in your gathering.’
Some of his words were slurred. As he reached the edge of the lobby roof and was therefore closer to the light that radiated from our decorations, I noticed his footing was a little less than firm.
‘I’ll bet,’ said Bobby and began to approach the porch. ‘Come down now sir, please. Right away.’ Like Scrub, he had a voice that conjured images of lonely cells, gruel and hot blisters.
‘Well, when you put it like that,’ the bloke on the roof conceded. ‘My chariot awaits!’ He gave a non-flammable sigh then bent his knees and leapt.
There was a loud ‘boing’ as he rocketed into the air perhaps two metres then, as I realised where he was intending to land, my mouth opened in alarm. ‘Noooo,’ I began to howl. ‘It’s not safe.’
Out of the corner of my eye I could see Sam had worked it out too and was raising his arms in warning. Whoever it was in the Spring-heeled Jack get-up had not properly thought this move through. I guess he anticipated that landing in the front seat of the sleigh might be a fantastic finale to his performance tonight. Of course he didn’t know about Bronson’s dodgy cable or the sparking that started up when it got damp, like it was now.
I remember hearing a ‘Geronimo!’ Then there was an ‘ooff’, a bang and a terrific sizzle. The sleigh flashed one last time and then exploded into sparks.
Smoke filled the air.
For a moment no one moved, then Audrey careered across the path to the smoking wreck. ‘Geoffrey! Geoffrey!’ she screamed. ‘Somebody do something.’
Scrub and Bobby Brown, quicker than the rest of us, dived into the tangle of metal and began tugging it apart, finally wrenching a lightly smoking form from the wreckage.
‘Sorry about that,’ it said.
At least it was alive.
‘Oh heavens,’ said Audrey, buzzing around it with a hair scarf in her hand, batting at his form as if putting out invisible flames. ‘Geoffrey are you all right?’
‘I think so,’ said the sooty figure now established as Geoffrey, whom Scrub and Bobby were leading to the lobby steps.
‘Should I fetch Doctor Patel?’ Chloe Brown asked.
Audrey whirled round and poked a finger at me. ‘Happy now?’
‘I’ll get Doctor Patel,’ said Chloe and made off into the museum.
‘Should turn this off. Plug in the lobby?’ Tone asked but then followed Chloe in without waiting for an answer.
‘Look what you’ve done to him, the poor boy,’ Audrey continued, helping Scrub and Bobby settle ‘Geoffrey’ down on the steps.
‘Done to him!’ I said, outrage filling my boots. ‘No one made him jump around like that. On private property.’
‘Well, he looks like he’s relatively unscathed,’ said Scrub. ‘Nothing damaged.’
‘Apart from my pride,’ said a smudged Geoffrey.
‘And my bloody sleigh!’ I said, surveying the wreckage. There was only one blackened reindeer standing.
‘It’s a hazard,’ said Audrey and came at me again. ‘You shouldn’t have it out here anyway. I’ve seen it sparking.’
Regrettably, I looked at my feet. Should have done a risk assessment. Though possibly leaping stilt-jumpers wouldn’t have come up on it anyway.
‘What on earth were you doing, er, Geoffrey?’ Sam asked the guy and stepped in front of me, blocking Audrey’s advance.
Geoffrey lifted his face to us. ‘I was only trying out my routine. I’m hoping to show it at the London Dungeon. Auntie Audrey said you’d be a willing crowd and I thought – it’s a Witch Museum – why not? I’m available for hire, you know.’
‘The cheek of it!’ Sam tutted.
‘How much?’ I asked quickly, keen not to enter into a discussion over public liability.
‘Er, £100 a go.’
Good, I thought: a starting bid. ‘Right, well, you can do a couple of spins when we reopen in January. Consider it some well-needed practice. And that’ll be free, thank you very much. Compensation for the damage.’
Geoffrey puffed out an indignant, ‘Don’t think so.’
I nodded at Scrub. ‘Then book him, Danno.’
Scrub sniffed. ‘You should be spending a night in the cells. A criminal damage charge might dent your sense of humour.’
Sam grinned and added, ‘Knocking over Bronson. Not to mention trespass.’
‘Public land,’ Geoffrey tendered but his voice was lacking in conviction.
‘No, it’s not,’ I told him. ‘It’s mine. And you, Audrey, you should be ashamed of yourself. Getting your nephew in on this. Do you want him to have a criminal record?’
Audrey’s face was still pinched but she said nothing and at that moment Chloe returned with Dr Patel.
‘Right then,’ said Scrub. ‘We’ll get the doctor to check you
then I’ll take you two home. Perhaps we should go over the terms of your injunction, Audrey?’
She opened her mouth but then shut it and I think I saw her nod.
Bobby Brown asked the inspector if she needed him, but Scrub said she’d be just fine and would probably get off home to the wife after this. The sergeant nodded and then, for the first time ever, I saw him smile. At Chloe. Who smiled right back.
Perhaps love was in the air tonight.
‘Right,’ said Scrub. ‘You lot go back inside. You’ve got guests to entertain.’
‘Well, they’ll certainly be thrilled by this little tale,’ said Sam.
‘Mm. Rather unusual and not very Christmassy,’ I said as we headed into the lobby.
‘Oh, I dunno,’ Sam jerked his head back to the sleigh. ‘Lords a-leaping are quite festive, aren’t they?’
‘A tad more than demons and celestial gateways.’
And then he laughed. ‘Now where were we before Spring-heeled Jack stole the show?’
‘Underneath the mistletoe,’ I said with a wink.
‘That’s right,’ he said and took my hand. ‘So we were.’
BAREFOOT THROUGH THE SNOW
I can only but think that the governor, no, not the governor – the lord. Yes. I can only but think that the lord – not he in heaven – but he in the seat who judged me so – that the lord has felt his frozen heart thaw. Even in this midwinter bitterness.
What a time for it to be so.
But nothing surprises me any longer. The worst is come and gone.
So cold. So bone chilling.
And yet my resolve will not falter. My feet, hard upon the crisping snow, will march on and on. Under this night guided by the bare-knuckle moon, over pale fields, I come to you, my dearlings. Can you hear me? Edmund, my strong boy. And Christabel, oh so sweet. I will gaze upon your lovely face once more, my child.
And though I have no gifts to bring, I shall hold you in my arms and I shall breathe in your milky softness.
The soft glow of you in swaddling always did bring in the light. Even in that most black of hells, that place crammed with lice and prickly darkness. And wailing and poison and death and beating . . . no. I will not linger on it. For, look – I am out.