Pastworld (19 page)

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Chapter 36

Mr William Leighton’s drawing room was set out formally. The room was more or less in darkness, very few lamps were lit, and gradually over the course of half an hour a mixed group of solemn, wealthy residents and Gawkers assembled and sat together around the table in the gloom of the November evening. Caleb had taken all of the damp coats, cloaks, hats and scarves and hung them near the drawing room as instructed. Bible J had taken the money at the door, all of it in notes. The pile grew deep on the salver.

The men were in their dark evening jackets, with high white shirt collars, and brocaded waistcoats with gold watch chains. The women mostly wore sombre dresses in dusty-coloured velvets, plum or greengage. One or two of them had paisley shawls wrapped around their shoulders against the cold.

The meeting started promptly. Caleb closed the double doors, and then pulled the heavy inner draught curtains. The effect of Mr Leighton’s entrance was startling. Everyone sat straighter, like a group of children when the headmaster comes in unannounced. They seemed ready, eager for anything. Caleb had been told to wait against the wall until such time as he might be needed.

There was no sign of Bible J.

Leighton took his seat. He spoke, with his head bowed and his hands on the table, fingers spread.

‘Oh spirits, bless our endeavours,’ Mr Leighton said, ‘and enable our science. A science which serves only to reveal truth, and help us, all of us here gathered, to come to terms with the mysteries of life and the losses of death, and those border lands that lie between those two worlds. Those of the quick and the dead.’

The room went very quiet. The sound of the fluttering gas filaments could be heard as they hissed and popped, and there was a smell in the room of something sweet and cloying, like a freshly opened hyacinth flower.

‘Let us put our hands upon the table and let us join our hands together.’

Caleb watched the visitors make a circle of their hands around the table. The silence extended while all bowed their heads in concentration. The room held its breath. After a moment or two Leighton spoke. ‘Are you there?’

There was a long silence.

Leighton spoke again. ‘Are you there? If you are with us this evening perhaps you would give us a simple sign, such as a rap on this table, indeed anything that it might please you to do to enlighten us of your presence.’ After a moment and the clearing of a throat, and what Caleb thought was a stifled laugh from somewhere, there was a sharp knock on the table. One of the women let out a yelp of surprise, and then quickly apologised.

‘Do not break the circle,’ Leighton said, ‘or we must start again. Tap once more if you are there.’

There was a sharp knock from somewhere on the table.

‘Is that little Miss Burgess? Tap once for yes, tap twice for no.’

Tap.

‘Good evening, Miss Burgess, and welcome.’

There was stillness around the table now, lowered heads. The room felt distinctly colder.

‘Shall you materialise tonight?’

Tap, tap.

‘Shall you speak to us tonight?’

Tap.

There was another silence, which went on for a minute or so, and then came the sound of a young child’s voice. It came from nowhere that Caleb could identify. It just floated into and around the room. The texture of the voice was distant, and it was surrounded with a flicker of other unidentifiable sounds.

‘Hello, help me. Are you there? Help me, help me.’

Everyone became agitated; Caleb watched as they lifted their heads looking around the darkened room for the source of the crackling, whispered voice.

Leighton spoke again. ‘Keep the circle now. How do you require us to help, Miss Burgess?’

Again the scratchy flicker around the voice, the same phrase: ‘Help me, help me.’

The audience were disturbed, one woman began crying quietly. A woman in a plum-coloured velvet dress said, ‘It sounds like my Amy,’ and she too cried quietly. ‘It sounds just like my Amy.’ A man sitting beside her gave her his handkerchief.

‘Do not break the circle. We have the manifestation of a voice, a miracle in our midst,’ said Leighton.

‘I want my mother,’ came the voice distinctly. The woman in the plum velvet broke the circle again and suddenly brought her hands up to her face and sobbed. Leighton spoke then, clearly and slowly, and with a certain weariness of tone, as if this were a familiar occurrence. ‘Mr Brown, I wonder if you would raise the light levels for us. Our experiment must now conclude, just for the moment.’ Caleb snapped out of his own reverie and raised the flow of the gas jets. The room jumped into semi-brightness. The audience stretched in their seats. There were audible mutterings of disappointment.

‘I think we shall take some refreshment now, and we shall attempt another contact. Perhaps our Miss Burgess may even materialise this time,’ Leighton said.

Caleb stood by the door and watched the Gawkers wait patiently while Leighton poured glasses of sherry from behind an occasional table. The woman in the plum velvet dress stood apart in obvious distress and finally Leighton asked Caleb to show her out.

Caleb held her cape for her in the hallway and she shrugged herself into it. She turned to Caleb and said through her tears, ‘It’s all silly tricks, isn’t it?’ She held her head high. ‘Cruel, nasty conjuring tricks.’ Then she stepped out into the street and Caleb shut the door behind her.

The Gawkers were back around the table upstairs. Leighton asked Caleb to dim the gaslight back down. Caleb adjusted the glow until the gloom was established again. They all joined hands in a circle once more, and Leighton cleared his throat and said, ‘Are you still with us, Miss Burgess?’

‘I am here,’ came the crackling voice.

Caleb stood and waited by the gas bracket.

‘Shall you materialise?’ said Mr Leighton into the gloom.

This time there was a loud
tap
on the table.

A milky white light appeared in front of the door. It flickered on and off, back into darkness for a few seconds then settled as a shifting, white glow like the fogs outside but brighter. A figure appeared, very faintly, in the centre of the light. There were gasps from the table, and audible intakes of breath. Caleb realised at once that this was just the sort of illusion that his father was always boasting about. The very thing he claimed to have developed back in the early days of Pastworld when he had devised ghosts and such things.

‘Don’t break the circle,’ said Leighton. ‘Concentrate now on the manifestation. Are you with us, Miss Burgess?’

The room felt colder. Caleb could clearly see his breath in the air now and the figure in the light raised its arms wide.

‘Help me, I want my mummy.’ It was the girl’s voice again but subtly different this time as if from far away. The figure in the light seemed to be a girl wearing a long white nightdress.

‘Miss Burgess, thank you for joining us. We can see you very clearly now. Have you a message of comfort for anyone here?’ said Leighton.

‘I would like to touch my poor mummy, to feel her kind hand again.’

In the silence that followed the room felt colder still. Caleb knew for sure that what he was watching was something fake – very clever, but fake. He guessed that it was some sort of holograph projection. It was very well done but certainly not a real ghost, and yet the people around the table seemed to have completely fallen for it. There was palpable emotion in the room and Caleb shivered, not just from the cold. Hadn’t his father been banging on about ghosts and illusions and machines when they were walking near Clapham Junction station?

‘I fear that your mother may not be here,’ said Leighton.

‘Then I should like to feel any hand at all. I should like to make a contact with someone from your world who has suffered a grievous loss. I want to comfort someone once more before I go back for ever into the darkness.’

There were some sighs and sobs from around the table at this.

Caleb recognised the voice; it was Bible J, either speaking into a special distorting device or cleverly putting on a girl’s voice. That broke his own tension and for the first time in days he was tempted to laugh out loud, but he controlled himself.

Leighton replied, ‘I will send someone to hold your hand, Miss Burgess. Mr Brown, knowing your sad history as I do, I wonder if you would go and take comfort from our revenant, our lost soul, for you are grieving too, I think.’

Caleb looked over at Mr Leighton. Was this a sick joke on his part?

Mr Leighton gestured for him to walk forward. Caleb brushed at the front of his uniform as if to prepare himself. ‘It’s true, but I don’t know,’ he said quietly, embarrassed, hesitating.

‘Go forward, please, go to her. No harm will come to you. Take her hand, take comfort from this poor lost child.’

Caleb stayed where he was.

‘I’ll do it,’ said a woman, standing up from the table. She squeezed past the chairs and walked nervously towards the light. She reached out nervously toward the ghostly white outstretched hand.

A loud bang came from outside the door and with it a sudden flash of bright light which stabbed its way under and over the closed door, and flickered around the gloomy parlour, like a flash of lightning. There was shouting followed by instant confusion around the table. The image flickered off and the room was plunged into dimness once again, and a wind of cold air swirled in from below.

‘Lights, lights, Caleb,’ Mr Leighton snapped.

Caleb went over and turned the gas jet up too high, too quickly and the room flooded with bright, greenish light. The Gawkers were caught awkwardly holding hands and blinking, fearful of another thunderflash.

The door burst open and Bible J was pushed hard into the room. Caleb saw that one of his arms was covered in a white sleeve and white glove. A ragged man, his face mostly hidden by a tattered scarf, had Bible J by the throat, and held a pistol to his temple. Behind him came another ragged man, who strode right into the middle of the room, stretched his arm out straight and levelled his own gun directly at Mr Leighton’s head.

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Chapter 37

The ragged man stood in the centre of the room with an army revolver held straight out in his hand.

‘Nobody move. Stay just where you are. Now, very slowly, all put your hands up in the air where I can see them.’

The Gawkers raised their arms, as did Caleb and Leighton.

Bible J was pushed further forward and he stumbled across the floor. Another ragged man came in, carrying a large carpet bag held wide open. The man with the gun said, ‘All of you are to put any valuables – cash money, jewellery, watches, anything and everything – into the bag, and you are to do it slowly. Leighton, you will put all of the entrance money in this bag now.’

‘I haven’t got it here. My houseboy will have to fetch it.’

‘Send him to fetch it then.’

‘Would you be so good as to go to the room upstairs young man and bring down the cash box? Mr Japhet has the key.’

Bible J stood with his arms in the air as Caleb fished the key out of his waistcoat pocket. He nodded his head almost imperceptibly as Caleb took the key.

‘Hurry,’ said the ragged man.

Caleb went to the stairs. Another armed man stood guard outside the door and watched him as he went up to the next landing and as he unlocked and opened the door. It was the gun room. The cash box was on the table. He looked at the cabinets and the rows of darkly gleaming guns. He quickly opened one of the cabinets and took out a Remington revolver. It was already loaded.
What am I doing?
he thought, but he was suddenly too nervous to answer his own question. He tucked the gun into the waistband of his trousers and draped his waistcoat over the bulge. He took the cash box with him and locked the door, then went back down to the seance room.

The ragged man emptied the box contents into the bag, which was now stuffed full of jewellery and cash. Then he spoke to the assembled Gawkers. ‘Ladies, gentlemen, Gawkers and thieves, you have contributed tonight to the funds of the mighty Fantom, and you can be sure those funds will be put to a very good use.’ There were mutterings and murmurings from the Gawkers.

Mr Leighton said, ‘Your employer will pay dearly for this.’

‘I doubt that, mate,’ said the ragged man. ‘You’ll have to find him first, now he really is supernatural. He comes from a “no where” and he goes to a “no place”.’ The ragged man picked up the carpet bag and backed towards the door. He looked at Caleb, reached forward and pulled the revolver out of his waistband. ‘Nice try,’ he said, ‘brave lad.’ He pocketed the gun, and backed out of the door, slammed it shut and turned the key.

Mr Leighton kept his hands in the air after the door had shut.

‘Stay as you are,’ he counselled. ‘Don’t move anyone, wait. I don’t trust them.’ There was the sound of a door slamming below and the sound of hooves and wheels on cobbles.

‘They’ve gone,’ he said, lowering his arms.

He was at once surrounded by querulous Gawkers, demanding he send for the police. They were outraged, and they were embarrased for allowing themselves to be robbed so easily. Angry and disillusioned, they jostled around him, some of the women were in tears, their voices broken with fear.

Bible J had slipped the white sleeve and glove from his hand and hidden it under the table.

‘Their object was to frighten you,’ said Leighton. ‘I will see that you are all financially recompensed. Caleb, see that everyone has their coats and show them out of the house. I too am in distress; my aura has been damaged. Leave me until next time, my friends, when all shall be well.’

The confused and angry Gawkers eventually left and Leighton ran up the staircase to the gun room.

‘Key,’ he snapped out.

He stepped into the gun room, lit the lamp and pulled Caleb and Bible J in with him.

‘I’m not blaming you, it’s not your fault. I should have explained about the Fantom and myself and the danger that he represents to me personally. Caleb, that was a good idea taking one of the guns. We might have had a chance of taking one of the bastards with it or getting one on the way out. Shame there was no time.’

He looked around at all of the precious guns. ‘It’s a good job you didn’t use it. They would have finished you off like that.’ He snapped his fingers. ‘It will soon be time to rally to the cause properly. That was an act of provocation. One of these days, and soon, we will load up and go and find him and deal with him once and for all.’