The Ghost Hunters (40 page)

‘No buts! If you’re so anxious to make money from your mediumship – your purported mediumship – then I suggest you go to the music halls instead, for this is a place of science and I have gone to considerable expense to have you here.’

Price’s eyes were burning with anger. ‘The sheer audacity of the Society for Psychical Research! If it’s war they want then war they shall have. And you, Mr Schneider – you will withdraw from your agreement or so help me you will regret your decision for the rest of your life!’

He stormed out of the room and the heavy door slammed shut, leaving me alone with Schneider.

‘My, he has quite a temper, doesn’t he?’ said Schneider.

‘It’s Harry’s world. The rest of us just live in it.’

‘And how does that make you feel, Miss Grey?’

‘I – I used to feel helpful. I
wanted
to be helpful. But now …’ I shrugged. ‘He has changed me.’

‘You feel as though life is passing you by, is that it?’

For a second I saw Vernon Wall’s cheery, lean face and felt a pang of regret.

‘Will you pull out of your agreement with Mr Price’s rivals?’ I asked.

‘Surely,’ he pointed out, ‘they are
your
rivals too?’ There was a slight playfulness to his tone. Was he digging for personal information that he could use later, during the seance? The possibility seemed highly likely, so again I said nothing.

Acknowledging my reticence Schneider said, ‘I will not renege on my commitment to the Society for Psychical Research. I am bound by it. Mr Price will have to learn that there are many worlds beyond this one – beyond his own.’

‘Then we shall see, Mr Schneider, the limit of your powers.’ I made for the door. ‘I must get on, I’m afraid; there are a hundred little things which need doing before your sitting: equipment to set up, third-party witnesses to invite to verify the proceedings.’

‘Miss Grey – a moment, please.’

I wanted to leave then, but his hypnotic voice held me. ‘Yes, Mr Schneider?’

‘I know you don’t trust me,’ he said quietly. ‘I understand. But you’re going to have to face what is coming. I feel that your father misses you and your mother terribly, that he is sorry for you both; but I can bring him back.’ He nodded, sure of himself. ‘I
will
bring him back. But first, there is something I require – an item of some personal significance which connects your father with this world. I did mention it to Mr Price in my letters. Do you have anything like that?’

I was suddenly reluctant to give anything personal to this man, let alone Father’s handkerchief which Mother still kept next to her bed.

I had said nothing, but Schneider’s eyes suddenly narrowed. ‘Very good, Miss Grey; thank you. That will do nicely.’

I caught my breath. How had he known? Had he guessed or had he
known
?

As if reading this thought too, Schneider nodded and said firmly, ‘Bring the handkerchief with you to the seance tomorrow evening.’

*

The date stands in my memory like a tombstone. It was the 27th of April 1932. The day of the seance.

I began that working day by taking tea with Price in his study. ‘You must calm yourself, Sarah; you look terribly nervous,’ he said. ‘Don’t be. I am extremely hopeful that Mr Schneider will not disappoint us tonight.’

I wanted him to be more than hopeful. I wanted him to be certain. ‘Then you‘ve forgiven Rudi for courting the opposition?’

A shadow crossed his brow. ‘I didn’t say that.’

Just then, Rudi Schneider appeared in the doorway. Price saw him and scowled. ‘Good morning, Rudi. Your big day has arrived at last!’

But Schneider was looking past Price and across at me with an expression of some concern, his gaze lingering on my throat.

‘What is it?’ I asked, alarmed. I touched my neck.

‘Oh … nothing. Forgive me.’ But a trace of anxiety remained etched around his eyes.

Price was issuing instructions as to what remained to be done before that night’s demonstration: ‘I want the world to know that the National Laboratory for Psychical Research has succeeded when Rudi triumphs.’ He turned to our guest. ‘Mr Schneider, I suggest you go back to your hotel now and rest. We will expect you back here no later than ten o’clock tonight, all right?’

‘Very well. Good day to you both.’ He gave a slight bow and was gone.

I can hardly express how nervous I was by this point, fearful of what the experiment would show.

Price’s eyes glittered with excitement. Rubbing his hands together, he said, ‘I have a sense that this is going to be quite magnificent, Sarah. The Society for Psychical Research will be shocked indeed.’

*

Just an hour to go. I went straight to the top floor, to give the seance room one final check before for the proceedings began. Everything was just as I had left it earlier that day: above me a net fastened to the ceiling, which later, just before the experiment commenced, I would pull down to separate Schneider from the rest of the room. Before me was the great wooden seance chair into which Schneider would be fastened, and next to this a small table with a red lamp resting on it. Cameras were positioned on all sides, each carefully primed. And beyond these, three rows of chairs – fifteen in all – for our spectators. Their view would need to be a good one. It was vital that every aspect of Schneider’s movements be observed in acute detail. His only stipulation was that the seance take place in the customary red-light conditions, which was the norm.

I reached into my pocket and drew out Father’s handkerchief which I had taken from Mother’s room, caught the scent of colourful memories, then kissed it gently, folded it and placed it on the table next to the lamp. Finally, when I had given the room a final check, I knelt among the shadows to pray.

‘Miss Grey, here you are!’

And there
he
was, the man who had promised the impossible. I got to my feet, but did not approach him.

‘Forgive me, I did not wish to startle you.’

‘What are you doing?’ I could hear the tension in my voice. ‘I’m afraid Harry hasn’t arrived yet.’

‘That’s good.’

‘Good?’

‘It wasn’t Mr Price I wanted to see.’

And in that moment I found myself wishing that I had never agreed to the deal that Price had offered me, and I longed for the chance to be free of the Laboratory, its unending darkness and its conduits to the dead.

‘What’s the matter, Miss Grey?’

‘Please, no nearer,’ I said, raising my hand. ‘In fact, I’d prefer it if you left. Harry will be here any moment; he and I have some work to do.’

‘Mr Price won’t arrive for another forty-five minutes,’ said Schneider darkly. ‘In fact, as we speak his train is just pulling out of the station near his home.’ I looked at his wrist: no watch. No clock on any of the walls either.

‘But how do you—?’

‘It’s what I do, isn’t it? Isn’t that why you asked me to come here – to show you what you cannot see?’ He stepped forward and this time I made no attempt to stop him. ‘If we are going to do this properly, Miss Grey, then it is vital that you trust me.’

He had reached my side and was looking down at me, into me, with his gleaming, magical eyes.

‘I never asked,’ I stammered, suddenly short of breath, ‘I never—’

‘Oh, but you
did
,’ he said quickly, his tone silky and soft. ‘Not with your mouth perhaps, but in here’ – he raised his hands and pressed his fingertips against my temples – ‘deep inside in here, you have been asking for such a long time now.’

He closed his eyes. And against my will I was powerless to resist my own eyes closing too. ‘What – what are you doing?’ My face was cold, my head light. The ground beneath me seemed to fall away, and I was floating. It was not unlike the sensation I had experienced at Borley Rectory, when Marianne Foyster had reached out to me with whatever dark powers she possessed and rifled through my thoughts. Except this felt different, almost soothing.

‘Trust me, please,’ he whispered.

‘No!’ I pulled away sharply.

He blinked. ‘You think that I have come here to play a game with you. Is that it?’

‘I haven’t ruled it out!’

‘Tell me, Miss Grey, what is it you fear most? That I might deceive you, or that I am right?’ He was calm, serene – as if my answer didn’t matter, or he didn’t care. Or he already knew what I would say.

The honest answer was probably ‘both’, for in agreeing to allow this man – the greatest medium in Europe – to attempt to summon my father’s spirit, I had broken my own rules. Instead of distancing myself from my emotions, the memory of my father, I had stepped forward willingly and embraced them. As much as I had struggled all these years not to think of him, I had come now to the final reckoning. Because the agony of not knowing was too much. I
had
to know. And I had to know, also, that I wasn’t about to be taken for a fool.

‘Mr Schneider,’ I exclaimed. ‘You might have convinced Harry of your talents, but you have yet to convince me.’

‘I’m not here to convince you, Miss Grey. I’m here to show you the truth; at your father’s command. And then, I assure you, you will believe.’

‘How
dare
you presume upon something so personal! It’s
my
opinion that matters the most. Not yours, not Harry’s – mine! Be under no illusions, Mr Schneider, if I find that you’re lying to us, attempting to trick either myself or my mother, then so help me I’ll make sure that you regret it!’

‘Are you threatening me?’ he asked in a low voice.

‘Consider it a warning,’ I said firmly. ‘And here’s something even Harry doesn’t know. Yesterday I had some representatives from a firm of building contractors inspect our seance room, just to triple-check there was no hidden apparatus inside that you could have planted to simulate your effects.’

‘You really don’t trust me, do you?’ He turned his head aside. His gaze latched on to a Ouija board discarded in the corner of the room and remained fixed on the item for some time as he drifted in contemplation. Finally, softly, he said, ‘Would you like to know something of what it’s actually
like
on the other side, Miss Grey? Of the nightmare the souls are forced to endure in the next world?’ To this I gave no answer, but he quickly filled the silence. ‘Forget heaven. The afterlife is a cold and dark place. The darkest. Imagine, if you can, the haziest dream you’ve ever had – that sense of personal solitude mixed with an ephemeral, half-tangible idea of who you are.’

I tried to remember my most recent dream – or was it a nightmare? – and stopped immediately.

Schneider continued, ‘In such a nebulous state, the fabric of life is before you, floating, falling, drifting, Miss Grey. In our dreams we are like lost souls. And on the other side, after this life, that is how it is.’ He looked up at me and I was alarmed to see that tears had formed in his eyes. ‘They are all so desperately sad, Miss Grey, so despairingly isolated – so many wandering
souls only faintly aware of one another, joined by the faintest, most fragile connections of thought. Psychic energy, Miss Grey, and half-remembered states.’ He blinked. ‘That’s what we become, all of us. In the end.’

‘It sounds dreadful,’ I murmured.

‘Indeed.’ He nodded gravely. ‘It’s not life after death. It’s death after death.’

*

The clock struck ten, and as the last chime sounded I entered the seance room, where Price and the sitters were assembled. Mother was among them. She wore a new black dress with bunched sleeves, and her eyes were fixed in hope on the man who had promised to contact my father. I could only imagine how she must have felt: she had waited for this moment for more than thirteen years.

I couldn’t help but feel that this was the stupidest, most reckless exercise I had ever embarked on.
It’s going to be fine
, I told myself, hearing my breathing deepen. But from the moment I saw Schneider’s form silhouetted in the doorway, I felt my pulse quicken. How had I allowed it to come to this?

As the young Austrian entered the room, clad all in black, a suppressed whisper rippled through the audience. He saw me and I fixed him with a gaze of the strongest intensity I could summon, daring him to wrong me.

‘Come along, Mr Schneider,’ said Price. He took the medium’s right wrist in his iron grip and led him into the centre of the room.

‘What is this?’ asked Schneider. He had seen the transparent mesh net which I had that evening hung from the ceiling and pinned to the floor.

‘Just a small addition from Miss Grey,’ said Price. ‘The net
prevents anyone in the audience from assisting you.’

But Schneider seemed quite unperturbed by this addition. Indeed, as he passed me on his route to the seance chair, he caught my eye, smiled and whispered, ‘You have your father’s eyes, Miss Grey.’ The words ignited momentary hope in my heart, but it was easier for me to ignore them than to acknowledge them, so afraid was I that the seance would end in disappointment. I took my place at the back of the room, my hands trembling slightly, as Rudi planted himself on the chair and said to the room, ‘Fear not, ladies and gentlemen, I will try to show you some very good phenomena tonight.’

With my heart in my mouth I watched carefully, taking meticulous notes, as Price placed a chair in front of Schneider and sat down facing him. On top of a four-legged wooden table, positioned just a few feet away from the two men, was a red lamp, already switched on, and next to this Father’s handkerchief, which I had brought with me. First the two men stared at one another silently and then Price said, ‘Very well, let us make a start. Rudi, I’m going to secure you now.’ He placed Schneider’s hands upon his thighs and firmly gripping his wrists so he could take his pulse, he clasped Schneider’s knees between his own.

There were three cameras in position, all of which were set to trigger simultaneously in the event of any untoward movements.

Price asked the room for total silence, and only after I checked that all the doors and windows were tightly shut did he ask me to turn the main lights down. I did so, head bowed and bursting with hope that Schneider, who was already putting himself into a trance-like state by chanting and rocking his body, would not fall short of our expectations. Everything counted on this.