Gathercole Investigates: The Case of the Wolf Moon – Part Four: The Last Howl

Gathercole awoke, slowly and stretched out his arm. The sheets and blanket always felt particularly heavy first thing in the morning, even without the eiderdown. The space next to him was empty and cool. How late had he overslept?

He’d stayed up rather late reading a manifestly disturbing article that been rejected from Scientific American. It purported to be written by one ‘Cecile Ambrose’ of Maine and discussed a reversal of Edison’s sketch of an idea that spirits might be able to influence delicate machines. It was the opinion of the writer that one could amplify spirits by a combination of human will and electromagnetism.

This ‘Cecile’ wrote with a very masculine voice, salacious and heavy with implication. While Edison barely groped at the possibilities Gathercole had uncovered, this ‘Cecile’ almost seemed to be a shadowy counterpart to his own studies. The article had left him disturbed and had given him a restless night, even though it was three in the morning by the time he finally joined a riotously snoring Crispin between the sheets.

He rubbed his face with both hands and slapped himself on the cheeks to rouse himself, summoning the energy to rise. After-images from his dreams still lingered, a big cat with blood on its muzzle, a mummified man, things that made little or no sense – as dreams seldom did. He threw on his blue-striped bathrobe and stumbled down the creaking stairwell to the kitchen.

Crispin was at the table in his wine-red pyjamas, his back to the stairs. He looked uncharacteristically tousled and hadn’t yet shaved. Gathercole couldn’t help but smile, seeing him in such a state.

“I do like it when you’re still here in the morning,” Gathercole smiled and stroked his hand across Crispin’s shoulders on his way to the electric oven.

He paused there, in front of the device. The toasting frames were sat atop the oven, smoking slightly. Crispin had been making him breakfast, so it seemed.

“You, ah, shouldn’t have,” Gathercole lifted one of the frames gingerly in a dishcloth. It was black on one side and completely pale on the other.

“Hmm?”

Gathercole’s attention slowly focussed. The blackened toast, the tea – no longer steaming in its cup. The darkened, congealed yolk of Crispin’s egg. He was just staring at the newspaper, barely responding.

“What’s the matter, Crispin?” Gathercole leaned forward and gently touched his hand. Crispin jumped.

“William, please, read this and tell me if I’ve gone mad.” His voice quavered as he tore out the page and handed it over.

Gathercole read it carefully, saying the words out loud.

“Obituaries… which one Crispin?”

“You’ll know.”

Gathercole’s lips moved slightly as he made his way down the list, before abruptly stopping. “Miss Ada Carter, lately of Birkbeck College, taken from this world on the 13th of July at the too-young age of twenty. A closed-casket funeral will be announced. Let her name be ever the household word that it always was.”

He paused a long breath, struggling to breathe and to maintain his composure.

“Ada’s dead.”

Crispin nodded.

“Our Ada, the girl from the university that we rescued.”

Crispin nodded again.

“But we rescued her!” Gathercole’s voice broke, and his legs began to shake. Crispin sprang from his seat, though he was as ashen-faced as Gathercole, gathering him in his arms and holding him tight.

“I know, William. We did our best.”

Gathercole wept, burying his face in his lover’s shoulder. “It’s not bloody fair. I should have known. I should have seen. I should have done more.”

“It’s alright, William, you did all you could. You couldn’t have known.”

Gathercole took a deep, steadying breath and stepped back a little, out of Crispin’s arms, though their hands lingered together. The tears stopped, and his brow furrowed as he fiercely thought.

“The thirteenth, of course, curse me for a fool. The Moon, Crispin. It’s the bloody Moon. We have to go back to the university. I know what we have to do.”

“Of course, William. We’ll make sure this never happens again, for Ada.”

“For Ada.”

---

“I can’t believe they wouldn’t let us in,” Gathercole smashed his hand against the dashboard of the car with a thump.

“Calm down William. How would you react if you’d had a bunch of ripe young minds and a professor killed, wouldn’t you be wary? Especially a man who, according to student prattle, had performed some sort of exorcism. An exorcism which, even if you believed in that sort of thing, didn’t work? Especially when he comes barging into the university demanding access to historical finds and uses the word – and I quote – cursed?” Crispin’s knuckles tightened on the steering wheel as he strained to keep his voice level.

“Well, when you put it like that…” Gathercole sighed and rubbed his temples with his fingertips.

“You’re the rational one, not me. You’re the brain, and I’m the heart. You’re the bile, and I’m the blood.”

“Lord spare me the dubious benefits of classical education. You can’t compare me to Plato or David, or even Diogenes? You have to compare me to pus? You call yourself a writer, an artist?”

“You know full well what I meant.”

Gathercole smiled and leant across the car to kiss Crispin on the cheek, smiling wider as he twitched away from his lips.

“Not in public. I know Crispin.”

“So what do we do?”

“If we wait for nightfall someone else might die who has handled the finds, but if we break in while the sun is up, we’re more likely to get caught.” Gathercole rubbed at his chin with his fingertips and considered.

“People are walking in and out all the time, it being a university and all. It’s not the getting in that’s the problem, it’s the being recognised and the police being called. Wouldn’t be the first time in a jail cell for me, but I’d rather it served a purpose.”

“Then we slip in the back, find the finds, we only need be there a moment, long enough to destroy the artefacts that are causing this. Then we can leave. Maybe nobody will see us, and we can deny the whole thing.”

Crispin turned his head and stared directly at Gathercole. “Bloody hell. That is not much of a plan.”

Gathercole levered open the door and swept out, leaning back in through the open door. “So, are you coming or not?”

---

Crispin trailed behind Gathercole, unsure and deeply uncomfortable, doing a terrible impression of someone trying to sneak.

“You have to promise me,” he hissed. “That we won’t be creeping around any more schools, at least any time soon.”

“I’m fairly sure it was this way.” Gathercole nodded to a confused looking student as they passed him in the hall.

“It has been a month Gathercole, surely they’ve packed them away somewhere by now, no?”

“You spent time in academia, surely you know better than that? Not to mention everyone who was really involved in this dig is dead. Remember?”

Crispin’s mouth turned down, and his brow furrowed. “You were joking and smiling. I thought you might be feeling a little better.”

“I’m not about to forget why we’re here.” Gathercole stopped and turned back to Crispin, looking him full in the eye. “We know there’s a life beyond death, of some sort. We’re privileged that way. It’s not her death, so much as its manner that upsets me. The pointlessness of it. The brutality of it. That, and I told her she was safe. These… spirits… made a liar of me.”

Crispin just mutely nodded, and as they rounded the corner of the next corridor, things began to look somewhat familiar.

“Here…” Gathercole twisted the handle. “Bugger, locked.”

“My turn then,” Crispin elbowed up the door and snapped the arm off his fountain pen, fiddling at the lock with the fragment of metal. “And to think, you disapprove of my scandalous ways. Where would we be now if I hadn’t kept breaking out of boarding school?”

“And into the other chaps trunks, to pilfer their tuck.”

“Guilty.”

The lock clicked, and they slipped through, Gathercole’s groping hand found the switch and the lights came up with dazzling brightness and a single ‘plink’ as the filament popped on one of the overhead lamps.

“Oh thank God,” Gathercole darted across the room to the crates and began to lever them open with his bare hands, rifling through the straw with a hasty lack of care. “They must be here somewhere.”

More warily, Crispin followed suit. Levering off the lids with another piece of wood. Together they sorted through the boxes one by one, picking up speed, setting the finds on the floor one after another, entirely out of order.

“Found them!” Gathercole scooped his hands under the straw and lifted out two heavy stones.

They were crudely wrought, angular and black, each the size of a pair of tennis balls, shot through with glittering veins of green and blue. Gathercole shivered as he stood, holding one in each hand. He lifted one arm and looked at his wrist, as the hairs twitched to attention.

“They’re cold. Very cold. I can feel the power in them.”

“So bloody well smash them, and let’s get out of here.”

Gathercole raised his arm over his head and stared at the floor, hesitating.

“WHIT THA HELL IS GAUN OAN HERE?”

They both startled. Gathercole dropped the wolf-head for a moment before awkwardly catching it.

“Sìol… it’s ye pair a scunners. Git th’ hell oot o’ ‘ere, afore ah call the polis!” The squat little man balled up his fists, his face turned scarlet from his cheeks to his bald pate, and he was a meaty fellow for a short professor.

Crispin interposed himself, sideways, between Gathercole and the angry scot. “Now, my dear fellow, there’s no need for an altercation here. We’re still trying to put an end to this.”

“Wi’ yer doolally nonsense aboot bogles’ n’ banshees’ n’ wolves? Awa’ an bile yer heid, ye bampot.” The short man tried to barrel past Crispin, a bundle of fury, tweed and pipesmoke.

Crispin laid his hand against the man’s shoulder and held him back. “Wee man, leave him to his work unless you want more deaths on your conscience. Mr Gathercole knows what he’s doing. It’s best to stay out of his way.”

“Ye gonnae stop me, ye wee streak a’ piss? Ah’ll be damned if some buggerer keeps me frae stopping ye.” The little man prodded Crispin repeatedly in the chest, forcing him two steps back.

“Fuck it.”

Crispin sucker-punched the Scotsman with a perfect and powerful right, sending the little man sprawling, hitting his head on the floor. “This buggerer,” he said, straightening his jacket. “Earned his stripe going toe-to-toe with the Bosch, trench raiding in Hohenzollern. Have a lie-down, you ghastly little man.”

He turned, wiping blood off his knuckles with his’ kerchief. “Smash the bloody thing William, before this turns into even more of a snarl.”

Gathercole shook his head. “I can’t, these things aren’t exactly evil, they’re old, and they’re something real, with genuine power. They’re a window into the past we’re just not ready for yet.”

Crispin paced back across the room to him and laid a hand on his shoulder. “Everyone who has handled them has been killed. If we don’t destroy them, this man will have a lot more than a bruised jaw, and you will die as well. Let me destroy them if you can’t. I couldn’t bear to see you die. It would shatter me to lose anyone else.”

Gathercole smiled, and the smile turned into a wide-eyed look of realisation. “What if we took them back? Where was it? Coldham? They’re all tagged with where, exactly, they were found?”

“It’s a hell of a drive.”

“Do you know the way?”

“There’s a map in the car, we’ll make do.”

Gathercole pointed towards the slumped Scotsman, who was snoring through his busted chops. “We need to bring him.”

Crispin sighed, and the pair of them stepped over to the unconscious man. Crispin wiped the blood from the man’s face, and Gathercole emptied his hip flask into his mouth and onto his tweed. “That should silence a few of the questions.”

Together they held him up, dragging his feet as they took him out of the university, the pair of malevolent wolf-heads safely ensconced in Gathercole’s bundled jacket.

---

The drive might have been pleasant if it were not for the sense of unease the wolf-heads created, or for the muffled cursing and writhing thumps of the bound and gagged Scotsman on the back seat. It was a balmy day and for all the drive was long, they made good time. The sky was finally starting to darken as the car bumped along the tractor trail that ran up to the Coldham field.

Finally, the back tyre fell deep into a rut, and with a scatter of gravel and sandy soil, the car ground to a halt.

“Well, we’re not getting any further without the help of a friendly horse or tractor.” Crispin had taken off his jacket and rolled up his sleeves, but there was nothing for it but to carry the angry scots professor and the wolf-heads the rest of the way on foot.

Twilight barely darkened the sky before the full Moon climbed in the stead of the sun. Away from the lights of the towns and cities, the Moon outshone everything. There was but a scattering of stars and not a sign of that great band of the milky way. The reflected light drained everything of most, but not all, of its colour, giving the landscape a dream-like quality as the air became heavy and damp.

“Blow this,” Crispin grumbled. “I haven’t sweated like this since the bloody war. This Scots bastard isn’t helping any with all his grousing and struggling.”

Gathercole stopped and leaned down to the bald professor’s level. “Professor Sievwright, I have my service pistol with me, and I assure you I shall have no compunction whatsoever about shooting you and burying you in a shallow grave to be found by some future archaeologist. This is a matter of life and death and if we do not get to the Coldham site in time, you will die anyway. Whether you consider us insane for our ramblings about ghosts and spirits or not is immaterial, if you’re going to die anyway, I should rather shoot you now than have to witness you being torn apart by wolves. Am I clear?”

The gagged man stared, wild-eyed, furious, but then the sincerity of Gathercole’s voice took hold and mutely, he nodded, and began to walk under his own steam.

“You should have been the poet, old man, not me.” Crispin chuckled, keeping a steering arm on the professor’s elbow.

Feelan’s copse appeared out of the field, a sudden dip in the land, untouched by ploughshare, coppice or crop. The way it sat, from a distance it seemed like gorse or other bushes, low to the ground, but when you came upon it, it was a grove of ancient trees, appearing like they sprang from beneath the earth itself.

England had forests and woods in plentiful enough number, but this was different. Barely an inch of the whole Island of Britain was untouched by man. Forests were managed, wood was harvested, gamekeepers and farmers cleared the deadwood, cut down the diseased trees, opened the canopy.

Feelan’s copse was different.

While its constituents were the same – trees and stumps, logs and fallen branches, brambles everywhere. Here they were a tumble, a tangle, breaking down and fighting with each other in glorious profusion.

Here were the ragged ends of dog violets at the edges, the first blooms of deadly nightshade, dog roses fighting with the bramble for supremacy, tall foxgloves aloof and swaying in the slight breeze.

There, deeper in, the flowers gave way to ferns and moss. Thick sleeves of cushiony green tamarisk throttling the ivy which, in turn, strove to strangle the trees from below, while the mistletoe choked them from above.

As they stepped through the undergrowth, the damp and dusty smell of the wood and soil was occasionally cut through with the sharp sting of alium.

“You can see why this place was sacred,” Gathercole ran his hands across one mossy trunk. “Everything they could possibly have needed, all in one place, and a place that is so nearly beneath the earth. A gateway to the underworld.”

Then they found it, the spot where the archaeologists had dug. Months of summer regrowth couldn’t mask it all, their digging had left a visible scar upon the land. Bare earth, with the first few weeds beginning to sprout, here the butt of a discarded cigarette, there a glass bottle of stout or ginger beer.

Gathercole unwrapped his bundled jacket, and placed the wolf-heads reverently on the ground, hunkering down to examine the note in the little moonlight that still managed to find a way through the canopy.

“If I can just figure out their grid system, we can put these back.”

“And then this will all stop?” Crispin called across the clearing, his hand still on the professor’s elbow.

“One can hope.”

The stillness of the night was split asunder by a distant howl. A pair of voices, twined like a rope, ululating over and above one another. They seemed to grow louder with each and every passing moment.

“Ungag him!” Gathercole cried, snatching up the wolf heads once more.

Crispin obeyed, yanking the spit-soaked sock out of the Scotsman’s mouth.

He took a moment, spitting into the ferns, red-faced and angry, glowering as he raised his own voice. “Let me gae, ‘n’ a willnae report ye tae th’ polis.”

Gathercole paced closer to him and held up one of the wolf heads, right before the professor’s bloodshot eyes. “Professor, that howling you hear comes from the guardians of these stones. I believe you are the next target for their ire, being the next person in line who handled and defiled these stones. To stop them, we must put the stones back, in the right place. Here’s the tag, tell me where that is.”

“Ah wisnae here oan th’ howk. How wid ah ken where is gaes?” The man shrugged and pulled at his ties. “Let me gae, ye pair o’ fuckin’ sodomites!”

No matter how hard he struggled, those ropes weren’t budging.

The howling came closer, louder than their conversation. The wind seemed to pick up, rustling the leaves, and a thrashing went through the wood. The sound appeared to come from everywhere at once. Twigs snapping, logs splintering as the giant, invisible beasts charged through the trees.

“Guess. You know how this works. We don’t. I think you have about thirty seconds to get it right. Crispin will untie you, so you can at least run, provided that you tell us.”

“Fuck. Ah dinnae ken. Thar, aboot six feet back fae whaur ye were before. Twa big sidesteps tae mah left.”

Gathercole hurried, kneeling down in the dirt, scooping with his hands, grubbing in the soil hurriedly. Crispin let go of the professor and hurried over alongside him. Standing between him and the onrushing sound of the spirits.

“I bloody hope you’re right about this.”

For a moment, the professor looked like he was about to run, but the sounds were undeniable now. It was a roaring snarl, branches swaying as the things came to the edge of the clearing. Instead of fleeing, he waddled on his bound legs to stay close – but not too close – to Gathercole and Crispin.

The charging sounds came to a halt, and at the fringe of the clearing, the shadows seemed to gather, to twist and turn until a pair of giant, shadowy figures seemed to pace and loom, red eyes glooming in the twilight.

“Jesus, whit th’ hell ur they? Whit ur thay? This cannae be real?” The professor fell back into the dirt, scrambling and squirming backwards in the earth. “Halp!”

“NA HIONRÓIRÍ!”
“NA HIONRÓIRÍ!”

Chanted the shades as they prowled, clawing the air.

“Latin, they understood Latin, didn’t they?” Crispin balled his hands into fists, interposing himself between the red-eyed spectres and Gathercole, who was pushing the soft dirt back over the wolf heads.

“Amici, uh… obsecro ira. Omnis conposui capitibus…blast… vestris!” Gathercole raised his filthy hands. “Pax! Pax! Iniuriam nullam… in animo… havi… no… habemus!”

“Your Latin is bloody terrible,” Crispin whispered through gritted teeth. “Let’s hope they’re not like my old Classics Master or we’re going to have sore backsides and skinned knuckles.”

Gathercole slowly stood and tugged on Crispin’s arm, sliding his hand into his and squeezing. “Come on, let’s get out of the way.” Together they moved back, step by step as the shades flicker-stepped closer, twining around each other, flowing in shape between wolf and man until they reached the fresh-turned ground where they stopped, crouching, touching the earth.

“BALLAGH LEAT!”
“BALLAGH LEAT!”

A pair of smoke-like arms stabbed fingers, pointing out of the woods, along the trail.

Between them, Gathercole and Crispin gathered up the whimpering professor and picked their way out of the woods on rubbery legs to find the comfort of the car, light, humanity and a drink at the nearest pub.

They’d raise a glass to Ada, together.

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Gathercole Investigates: The Case of the Wolf Moon – Part One

Part One: The Fate of Nyctimus

The door creaked open, swollen slightly in its frame from the wet of the summer storm. The petrichor scent was still rising from the hot streets, strong enough that it even masked the copper-rust smell of the room.

“I’m afraid I’ll get in trouble for this, but I’m fresh out of ideas, and this whole affair made me think of you.”

He was a tall, lanky man, surprisingly graceful and topped with a shock of red hair that – other than its colour – wouldn’t have looked out of place on a negro. It was – somewhat haphazardly, pushed down beneath a rolled derby and otherwise, his appearance was impeccable.

“I’m flattered Detective Constable,” Gathercole smiled slightly and picked his way over the threshold like a ballerina en pointe, careful to disturb little.

“I’m off the clock old boy, call me Charlie,” said the detective, following in Gathercole’s wake.

Gathercole paused and covered his hand with the bright blue handkerchief from his breast pocket, quite the contrast to his pale cream jacket. So protected, he flipped on the electric light and revealed a shocking scene.

The rooms were of impeccable taste, a fascinating – but balanced – the contrast between the old and the new.

There were shelves, heavy with books and ornaments, some of which seemed like nothing but rubbish. There were fragments of broken pot, pieces of stone, a few old coins. These were presented just as proudly as the modern clock on the mantle, or the standing lamps in the shape of half-naked dancers, scandalous – but rendered slightly more tasteful by the angular form of their sculpting.

The furnishings, similarly, were tasteful and modern, sleek and angular. This sense of tension between the old and new, the tastefulness of the décor, the stylistic ornaments, the artefacts upon the shelves, it was all disrupted by just one interrupting element.

Everything had been splashed with blood. It was as though some geyser of gore had erupted in the centre of the room. Blood splatter reached as far as the ceiling, and despite the best efforts of the police thus far, there were still fragments of viscera dashed about the place with the liberal abandon of wedding confetti.

Gathercole picked his way across and around the room, taking everything in with cold and precise detachment. A magician’s flourish and his notebook and pen appeared, conjuring the chicken-scratch shorthand of his notations across the page.

Detective Constable Wentworth held back, letting Gathercole work, following him with his gaze as the man in white went over the room with methodical, mechanical precision.

Finally, Gathercole stepped back to the detective, and his pen paused against the page.

“The body has been removed, but it is clear that this was a particularly violent death. One that would put a frenzied butcher to shame. The room tells me surprisingly little about the victim, though I would guess that they were a man,” Gathercole glanced to the standing lamps. 

“A man who did not hurt for money,” He continued. “I note that the poker is missing from the fireplace and not to be found, suggesting that they grasped it to defend themselves and that it has been removed from the scene with the body.”

Gathercole moved past Wentworth to the door. “I can’t say I’m much of a fan of open-plan living, though of course, the upper floor is more private. A general-purpose room all but directly off the front door suggests certain things about their character, but I do hate to speculate. The windows are all fastened, and there is no sign of damage, at least down here. The front door, however, is a different matter. I see the wood has been snapped where the door has been forced. There are deep scrapes in the carpet and on the back of this kitchen chair. That suggests that it was barricading the door when it was forced.”

“Ah, that was us Gathercole. He had to force entry to get to the corpse.”

“I see,” Gathercole swiftly crossed out several lines of shorthand.

“In which case, I see no sign of forced ingress on this floor. Wait here.”

Gathercole carefully stepped across the bloodstained room and disappeared into the back rooms for a time, then – leaving his shoes behind – he made his way in stockinged feet up the stairs. It was some time before he returned, sitting on the stairs to re-tie his shoes before he continued.

“No forced windows upstairs, no signs of struggle there. Nor at the back door, though another chair is braced against the rear door. They certainly knew something was coming for them. No soot, so nothing got in down the chimney. What can you tell me about the victim?”

Wentworth fetched his own notebook from his pocket and thumbed through the pages. “Professor Noel Bradley, forty-four years of age, the presumed victim as this is his residence and he hasn’t been seen today. A professor of archaeology at Birkbeck College, University of London. This only happened last night, so we’re still phoning around and gathering statements.”

“What can you tell me about the state of the body?” Gathercole’s pen paused again.

“Well, since I know you’re not squeamish… the poor bugger was torn the shreds. Throat ripped out, guts torn open. There were bite marks all over him. Now, I’m something of an amateur naturalist, and to me, I don’t think this was any dog I’ve ever seen. Not at that size and with the shape of the jaw. If it were anything, it was a freakishly gigantic german shepherd, and personally, I’d put money on a wolf.”

“Not your typical murder weapon, d’you have any theories?” Gathercole screwed the cap back onto his pen, tucking it back into his pocket with his notebook.

“Those sorts of things are well above my rank old boy, but between you and me nobody has the slightest clue. So I called you.”

“I think you were right to,” Gathercole stepped past Wentworth and out onto the damp flagstones of the path. It was steamy and humid now outdoors, and he loosened his tie, blinking at the bright sun.

“If anyone asks, you didn’t hear anything from me. Honestly, though, it seems to me that it would take something unnatural to sneak a dog or dogs into a closed house like that anyway, let alone not to leave any paw prints or hair. It’s all yours.”

Crispin was waiting by the Bedford, smoking a cigarette and frowning slightly against the sun.

They climbed into the car and started it up, Crispin tossing his cigarette out of the window to concentrate on turning the wheel. “Something for us then?”

“I think so, though we’ll have to play it carefully. The police aren’t the most understanding of my experiments.”

“Except Charlie there. He seems quite open to your ideas. How do you know him anyway?”

Gathercole glanced across the car and smiled slightly. “Drag ball near White City, you wouldn’t think it for those sideburns, but he makes a halfway decent flapper in the right dress.”

Silently Crispin’s grip on the steering wheel tightened, and the car began to pick up speed.

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Gathercole Investigates: The Case of the Haunted Man – Part Two

Part Two: Melancholia

Gathercole sat, or rather perched, on one of the kitchen chairs. He looked as though he would much prefer not be sitting there, but was doing it to be polite – however prim he looked. His friend, Crispin St. John, was not so intent on being polite, and stood back from the table, leaning against the wall.

He made a striking contrast to Gathercole. Where Gathercole’s hair was short and dirty-blonde, Brylcreemed back, Crispin’s was down to his collar and a dark chestnut brown. Where Gathercole wore another pale suit, with almost military precision and was fastidious, sitting on a handkerchief, Crispin wore a dark blue suit in a rumpled, casual state. Where Gathercole was clean lines and unadorned, Crispin wore a wilting green carnation and a bright red – if loose – tie. They made strange companions.

The reason for Gathercole’s primness was the execrable state of Hodgson’s apartments. Rusty stains adorned every wall and dripped down to every floor, where they crusted on the carpeting and boards. There was dust everywhere, and it seemed that every pot, pan, plate, knife and fork was dirty and fly-speckled. Even the light was dim and dusty, the electric lights as fly-speckled as the saucer Gathercole was using as an ashtray.

“I apologise for the state of the place. The housekeeper left even before the bank terminated my employment. I don’t know that I can even pay you, but if you can get this… fiend to stop dogging my every… b-bloody move I will find a way to pay you back.”

Gathercole stirred the ashes without raising his gaze to Hodgson. “Never mind all that, knowledge is its own reward. I must, however, know as much as possible about this creature that has destroyed your life. When did it start?”

Hodgson gathered himself, with some noticeable effort, fortifying himself with a nip from a small bottle of gin. “Perhaps a month ago now, I have had trouble keeping track of the days. Any calendar I hang upon the wall is torn to pieces, and I cannot keep a clock or watch wound here. Since I lost my employment it has been even harder, but I think, perhaps a month.”

“A cycle of the Moon, or near as damn it,” Gathercole left the end of his Dunhill smouldering on the saucer and began making quick, neat notes in a small black-leather notepad. “Have you encountered anything strange, a person, an object, an unsettling book or sound?”

“Crossed an angry gipsy perhaps?” Hodgson snort-laughed bitterly and hung his head, taking a couple of deep breaths. “No, nothing of the like.”

“Does the house have any sort of sordid history? Murders, occult activities, criminal enterprises, built upon a burial pit or anything of the like?”

Crispin lost interest and meandered away about the rooms, creating the occasional interruption as he rattled at the grate or opened the windows.

“Not so far as I am aware. I called in at the house agent who sold me the place and they had no records of anything that would explain it. He thought me quite, quite mad.” Hodgson’s head sank lower and lower.

“This manifestation, it is strongest here?” Gathercole’s eyes shifted from the immiserated Hodgson about the room, trying to ignore the filth and to get the measure of the place.

Hodgson looked up again at that. “Yes, but it follows me. It has spilt my drinks at several pubs, threatened me while I have been walking. I was almost shoved in front of a train at St Paul’s. Here though, I have been scratched, bruised, bitten. The house has become unbearably cold, or stiflingly stuffy. There have been the most beastly stinks. Banging on the pipes and walls at all hours of the day and night.”

“It’s quiet now,” Gathercole observed. “And, you’ll pardon my candour, but a stink would be hard to notice.”

Hodgson flushed with shame as Gathercole continued.

“I should like you to stay while I conduct my experiments, the phenomenon seems as linked to you as it is to this place. I shall need you to follow my instructions, however peculiar you may find them. Crispin and I will stay until the morning with you. Heaven help us, but these things seem empowered by night. I believe this creature must tie to an anniversary, and to this place. Some hidden history that has escaped record.”

Hodgson simply nodded and took another gulp of his gin.

Gathercole fetched his canvas kit bags from the car and set them down in the hall with exaggerated care. He then made his way about each and every room with ruthlessly methodical efficiency.

He closed and locked the door, pocketing the key, then applied a two-inch strip of Scotch tape across the keyhole and over to the frame.

He closed every window, sticking them in place with more tape and dusted the sill and jamb with fine talc before closing the curtains.

He circled each room, tapping the wall, the floor, the ceiling, seeking the peculiarities of thickness and thinness, learning the bones of the house beneath.

He took the temperature in each of the rooms and closed the grates in the fireplaces, sealing them up with rubber cement to prevent the possibility of any draft.

Last was the bedroom, which was in a sorry state, even for a bachelor. With Crispin’s reluctant aid, Gathercole dragged Hodgson’s bed into the middle of the room and then unpacked his second bag.

This was a most peculiar apparatus indeed. Five finely made wooden boxes, each trailing a rat’s nest of wiring, each attached to the sixth box with dials, valves and bulbs studded into its front. From the top of each box extended a diamond-shaped aerial, crossbars with a filigree of wiring. With each box precisely positioned, Gathercole plugged it into the bedroom’s power and warmed the valves, tuning each aerial with deft, sure hands.

That done, he circuited the house again, double and triple-checking everything he had done, adding more notes to his book. He scattered more talc on the ground, little worried about dirtying the sordid apartment any more. In each room, he replaced the light with a red bulb, such as those used by photographers. This done he finally retired to the bedroom with Hodgson and Crispin, bedrolls laid out for the two guests, Hodgson sitting uncomfortably, cross-legged on his unmade bed.

Gathercole sat, next to Crispin, on his bedroll. He peered at his instruments, arranging them with all the precision of a Grand Dame’s cutlery.

There was a scientific thermometer, of exceptional accuracy.

There were two cameras and a loaded flash tray.

There was a snuff-box of silver dust, a small bottle of holy water, a wooden cross, a pocket bible and an electric torch.

His old service revolver – loaded but not cocked – was close at hand.

Besides the electrical box of tricks, there were two clocks, one electric, one mechanical, ticking in sync, keeping precise time.

Crispin, by way of contrast, had spent all that time preparing a pair of coffee flasks and fetching his boiled sweets from the motor-car.

“What is all this?” Hodgson asked once they were all settled. None of them were going to sleep, and the silence and stuffiness of the house was unbearable to his nerves.

“He’ll talk your ear off about it,” Crispin offered, taking a sip of his coffee and heaving a long-suffering sigh.

Gathercole chuckled, pausing to re-check his instruments before he began to talk. “During the war, I met a man, a fine man, a fellow officer, a lieutenant in the artillery. He was a peculiar fellow, a sort of chaplain unofficially, to the men. He had some deuced strange ideas about death, spirits and the afterlife but spoke with such damned certitude that you couldn’t help but believe him.”

Gathercole ran his fingers over the butt of his Webley and his gaze unfocussed. “Thomas, he shared your name, was killed before he could satisfy my curiosity. Even so, the things I saw at Flanders made me a believer. I made it my purpose to track down his work after the war. He was a visionary, marrying the mysticism and balderdash of the past with electricity and the scientific method. I took his ideas and built on them, learning all I could, which lead me to this.”

Gathercole’s hand swept across the array of antennae. “The wireless pentacle, a step beyond anything old Thomas ever envisioned. He saw the relation between electromagnetism and the ab-natural, but never took the step beyond the material. These beings, such as your fiend, have no physical form under usual conditions, so why should one need a pattern or a wire? As we sit here, hundreds, thousands or electromagnetic waves are coursing through the air in a finely modulated pattern, creating a constant, vibrational, three-dimensional form of the pentagram. The modern and secular, married to the ancient and profane. Brilliant, though I say so myself…”

“Which you do,” Crispin smiled and popped another sweet into his mouth.

There was a sudden and subtle change in the hum of the electricity coursing through the room. Gathercole raised a finger to Crispin, demanding silence. Hodgson was already silent and stared into the shadows in evident agitation.

Gathercole played the dials of his radio-pentagram like a musician. He squinting at dials and needles, turned their arcane numbers and indications over and over in his mind. “Whatever you do Mister Hodgson, do not leave your bed. The radio-pentagram should keep you safe.”

“What about us?” Crispin observed, wryly.

“The fiend, whatever it is, appears to be focussed on Hodgson. We should be safe.”

“Should be.” Crispin reached across and plucked the cross from amongst Gathercole’s accoutrements.

“I thought you were an agnostic?” Gathercole glanced up from his dials for the briefest of moments, with a wry smile.

“I’m counting on the ghost being a believer.”

“It’s here!” Hodgson’s shaky voice cut through the banter.

The mercury in the thermometer was dropping, sweat began to bed on their skin in spite of the cold. The air got damp, dense, stifling, and beads of water formed on the stained and peeling wallpaper.

The stains and drizzles turned dark, but before any of them could be sure that it was blood – not water – the shadows closed in and thickened. The feeble red lights barely penetrated the gloom, and only their pale faces showed in the dark, picking up the light like the screen of the Astoria.

“It’s stronger, it’s more powerful!” Hodgson cried in terror.

“Stay on the bed! Within the aerials!” Gathercole scrambled to his feet. “I’ve never seen anything like this! The power of it! It shouldn’t be like this from everything I’ve studied, everything Hodgson has told us.”

A muttering sound built out the heavy shadows, rising in volume and intensity to a deafening scream of anger and outrage.

“THOMAS HODGSON! YOU BLOODY BASTARD! YOU WILL PAY FOR ALL YOU HAVE DONE!” It was akin to a choir from hell, many voices as one and seeming to blast from every wall, floor and ceiling at ear-ringing volume.

The aerials began to glow and crackle, the electric blue light mingled with the dark red to turn the room an unnatural flickering purple. Gathercole threw himself back to the floor, twisting the dials to their maximum setting.

The howling darkness seemed to gather and throw itself at the bed. It rebounded from the barrier with a crackling flash, straining, again and again, determined, spending its power to smash at the protective ward. The sparks flew, the aerials crackled and sang. Crispin winced and clutched the cross with white knuckles in one hand, the other flying to his cheek where the electrical ember had burned him.

The shadow billowed like smoke, spiralling around the room in an ever-tightening spiral. With a sharp pop, each of the red bulbs exploded, one after the other. There was a louder snap and crackle and the power coursing through the aerials was abruptly cut. Burning Bakelite and melting vinyl mingled with ozone and every last spark of light was extinguished.

Hodgson screamed in the darkness, and the whole bed began to rattle. Without the barrier of the radio-pentagram, there was nothing left to stop it.

The electric torch flared with a sudden blinding light, revealing Hodgson’s form, suspended in the air and bound by shadows, choking, gasping out his pleas for aid. Crispin was paralysed by fear, pressed back into the wall in a panic.

There were few options left.

Stumbling over his words, Gathercole tried to steel his voice with confidence. The sibilant, long and rolling syllables of the Saaamaaa ritual came halting and slow. Horror shook him, his flesh crept, his voice haltering but somehow they still retained some power, half-remembered and slurred as they were. The dark force, weakened from its exertions, was driven back, dissipating like smoke with a last few hisses and curses before it finally melted away.

The oppressive pressure in the room receded, and Gathercole turned the torch on Hodgson, a sobbing mess of a man, twisted around the filthy sheets of his bed.

“You Sir, haven’t been entirely truthful.”

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Gathercole Investigates: The Case of the Haunted Man – Part One

Part One: Madam Sokolev’s Seance

The room was cloaked in shadow, filling every corner with suggestions of motion and giving the room a sense of unearned intimacy. The candlelight flickered with the breath of the guests as they chatted in low, hushed tones or blew the smoke from their cigarettes into the light.

There was a rattle of beads, and with a grand sweep, that set the candles fluttering, Madam Sokolev entered. She was a giantess of a woman, square of jaw and broad of shoulder and hip with a pendulous bosom, buried beneath layers of shawls and beads. Her seat creaked as she set her bulk down into it and leaned into the slender circle of light. The yellow flame of the scented candles did nothing for her face, slathered as it was in thick make-up, nor did the scent of lily of the valley do much to mask the miasma of cheap sherry and cheaper tobacco that followed in her wake.

“I vill need zilence,” intoned Madam Sokolev as she laid her hands, palms down, on the black tablecloth.

There was a slight, stifled laugh from the young man in the cream suit. He swallowed it down, shamed into silence by the glare of the other worthies around the table.

“I do apologise, a slight cough,” he said, but there was a smug smile on his fresh face, and he used the excuse of stubbing out his Dunhill to look down and away.

“Please to be joinink hands,” Madam Sokolev reached out her hands to the worthies beside her and one by one, a little uncomfortable, they all followed suit.

Sokolev began her intonations, her calls to the spirits. She projected an air of seriousness, but the man in the cream suit had to stifle another laugh. He also broke the circle for a moment and wiped his hand against the tablecloth. The man next to him was clammy, pale, trembling as he tried to hold the circle. Sokolev glared, and the man in the cream suit completed the circle once again, sweaty grip or not.

One by one, each person around the table got their moment in the spotlight with Sokolev. She channelled their lost fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters and even their pets – to the extent of barking and yipping like a tiny dog. There were knocks and breezes. The candle-flame flickered in peculiar ways; it was all any of them could ask for – short of ectoplasm. Conspicuously, she passed over the man in the cream suit, eliciting another smirk, and settled her attention on the clammy man.

“I am callink on the spirits, any who are here. Those who have passed and wish to speak vis Mr Hodgson.”

The clammy man looked up into the drifting smoke that swirled around the candle, his face a strange melange of hopeful and terrified at the same time.

Madam Sokolev started and twitched in her seat. The pretty young thing on her right squeaked in surprise. “Gosh, that smarts! Please!”

For the first time since the séance had started, Madam Sokolev’s voice changed convincingly. From the thick gipsy accent (in the sense that it was an accent that travelled far and wide, sometimes in a single sentence) to a gruff and brutish East End rumble.

“YOU!” The whites of Sokolev’s eyes glared towards Hodgson, the clammy man who was swallowing over and over again. “THOMAS HODGSON! YOU BLOODY BASTARD! I SHOULD…”

The voice cut off, abruptly and Sokolev’s pupils returned to their customary position, leaving her looking dazed and confused. The man in the cream suit had stood, breaking the circle, and had uttered some strange phrase in some arcane tongue, all drawn out ‘ay’ sounds, rolled ‘ahs’ and sibilant hisses. It was like a line, drawn under the whole affair, shattering the atmosphere and mystique.

“That is quite enough of that,” the man in the cream suit slid back his chair and stood, adjusting his cufflinks. “And quite enough of this, Madam Sokolev.”

He moved swiftly around the room and flicked the light switch, the electric light plinked on and filled the parlour with an unforgiving light that caused everyone in the room to wince and squint.

“A fine show Madam Sokolev, a fine show indeed. However, it is no longer the nineteenth century, and I am not some mince-headed duffer like poor old Arthur.” He flicked aside the heavy drapes with a disdainful sneer across his face. “Holes in the panelling, so a compatriot can create unnatural breezes and whispers – barely audible – to unsettle us. The rest of the trickery is far less glamorous, but you all heard precisely what you wanted to hear, nothing that was real,” he sighed. “Barking? Really? Has the craft sunk so low? As for the knocking, the good Madam clicks her toes as you might crack your knuckles to create the sound. Now that is a skill, genuinely impressive.”

The worthies were in an uproar now, none more so than Madam Sokolev, who looked a damned sight less feminine in the electric glare. Harrumphing and grumbling, full of blind denials, hating being exposed for chumps – such was always the way – they made for the exit.

The man in the cream suit stopped Hodgson short with a hand on his arm. “Not you, what happened with you was something genuine, something real. That’s the real reason I come to these place, not to out frauds like Mickey here. To find people who might be genuinely haunted.” He nodded towards ‘Madam Sokolev, who clenched ‘her’ fists and stomped out with the swagger of a drill sergeant.

“Poor fellow, any excuse to wear a dress. I feel for the chap.”

“What?” Hodgson was a nervous wreck, slick with sweat, trembling, barely taking in anything that was going on around him.

“Allow me to escort you out.”

The summer’s night air was pleasantly fresh after the stifling closeness of the parlour, and the man in the cream suit steered Hodgson down the road like a sober friend shepherding a drunk.

“My name is Gathercole, William Gathercole. I am an investigator into the ab-human, the ab-natural and the strange. Amongst which are the things that you would call ghosts. I believe, building upon the work of my predecessors, that these are a natural phenomenon. We once thought lightning to be the work of Thor or Zeus. I think our understanding of these phenomena is also wrong-headed.”

Hodgson made some vague, affirmative noises and seemed to be slowly recovering, though he jumped at the chuntering passage of a motor car down the road.

“I’m so sorry, already talking shop. To get, finally, to the point, I believe that you are genuinely haunted. I should very much like to help you and to test out my theories. What do you say?”

Hodgson stopped, unhooked his arm from Gathercole and leant against the wall of the chemists. “I only came here because I was desperate. It is a monstrous thing, a fiend that stalks me. It is pure hatred. I do not think you, or anyone, could stand against it, and it seems to be growing stronger.”

“Stronger? Fascinating?” Gathercole stroked his chin as he considered. “Most ab-natural phenomena succumb to the inevitable march of entropy, like everything else. Unless… but no, it’s too early to be speculating. What is the nature of the manifestation?”

Hodgson rubbed his temples with one hand and fished out a hip flask, taking a nip to steady his nerve. “It began as a presence, a feeling. The hairs would stand up on my arms. I would get a creeping feeling at the back of my neck. I put it down to being spooked or nervous or that feeling we all sometimes get, of someone stepping on your grave.”

Gathercole lit a Dunhill and paced back and forth, staring down at his feet, turning on a sixpence to come back, his mind clearly racing.

“But it didn’t stop there, right?”

“No,” Hodgson took another sip from his flask. “Then I noticed things had been moved when I wasn’t looking. Food was mouldering faster than it should have. The house would be unnaturally cold, or still to the point where I could hardly breathe.”

“That’s not the limit of it, is it? Such parlour tricks wouldn’t so shake you.”

“I was sure I was going mad. It wouldn’t happen when anyone else was around. It was like it was tormenting me and me alone. There was blood, eventually, and while nobody saw the walls bleed, they saw the stains afterwards. They saw the bruises after the thing attacked me, but they never saw it.”

“But you did.”

Hodgson glanced up, and for the first time, Gathercole really saw the black bags around his eyes, and how haggard and drawn he looked. “I did. I saw it. Dear God in heaven, I saw it. If this goes on much longer, it will kill me.”

Gathercole flicked his cigarette into the road, where is scattered and sparked, smouldering and glowing in the dark.

“Give me your address. I must prepare, but I shall be there as soon as I can to put paid to your tormentor.”

Hodgson fumbled his calling card from his wallet, creasing it in his fingers in his clumsiness and handing it, shakily, to Gathercole. In that time a two-tone, burgundy and silver Bedford sedan pulled up, idling.

“Crispin, my driver,” Gathercole offered as he spirited the card away into his jacket.

“I’m not your bloody chauffeur,” offered Crispin – a slight, chestnut-haired man with a dark scowl – out of the window of the Bedford.

“You just can’t get the staff these days,” Gathercole offered with a smile as he hauled open the rear door of the car. “I’ll see you soon.”

Hodgson was left shaking, at the side of the road as the car slid away into the night. Its lights reflected in his full, staring, terrified eyes.

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