The Cure of Souls (14 page)

As if she’d been planning this for some minutes, she suddenly hurled herself across the lawn, passing within a couple of feet of Merrily, and into the glazed porch, slamming the door, shooting a bolt and glaring in defiance from the other side of the glass, poor kid.

Three times that evening, Merrily tried to call Hazel Shelbone. Twice it was engaged, the third time there was no answer.

When she’d got home, there’d been a message from Jane on the answering machine. Merrily replayed it twice, trying to detect the subtext.

‘
Well, we got here. All of us. The whole family. It’s quite a big place, an old whitewashed farmhouse about half a mile from the sea, near an old quarry, but you can see the sea from it, of course. So it’s… yeah… cool. And the whole family’s here. Everybody. So… Well, I’ll call you. Look after Ethel and, like… your little self. Night, night, Mum
.’

Hmm. The whole family, huh?

The shadows of apple trees meshed across the vicarage garden. In the scullery, Merrily switched on the computer, rewrote her notes for tomorrow’s sermon and printed them out. It was to be the first one in – well, quite a long time – that she’d given around the familiar theme of
Suffer little children to
come unto me
. A complex issue: how
should
we bring kids to Christ? Or was it better, in the long term, to let them find their own way?

Merrily deleted a reference to Jane’s maxim:
Any kind of spirituality has to be better than none at all
. Dangerous ground.

We never pressed the Church on her, David and I
, Hazel Shelbone had said.
Never forced religion on any of our children
.

Bet you did, really
, Merrily thought, gazing out at the deepening blue,
whether you intended to or not
.

She recalled Hazel saying, in answer to her question about what might have got into Amy,
The spirit of a dead person
, in a voice that was firm and intense and quite convinced.

Now she had a question for Hazel:
who is Justine?

She reached out for the telephone and, as often happened, it rang under her hand.

He said his name was Fred Potter. It was a middle-aged kind of name, somehow, but he sounded as if he was in his early twenties, max.

He said he worked for the Three Counties News Service, a freelance agency based in Worcester, supplying news stories to national papers. He said he was sorry to trouble her, but he understood she was the county exorcist.

‘More or less,’ Merrily admitted.

‘Just that we put a story round earlier,’ Fred said, ‘but a couple of the Sundays have come back, asking for a quote from you or the Bishop, and the Bishop seems to be unavailable.’

‘Let’s see… Saturday night? Probably out clubbing.’

‘
What?
Oh.’ He laughed. ‘Listen, Mrs Watkins, if I lay this thing out for you very briefly, perhaps you could see if you have any comments. I’ve got to be really quick, because the editions go to bed pretty early on a Saturday.’

‘Go on, then.’

‘Right. This chap’s convinced his house is badly… haunted. He and his wife are losing a lot of sleep over this. It’s an old
hop-kiln, a man was murdered there. Now they say they’re getting these, you know, phenomena.’

‘I see.’

‘Wow,’ said Fred, ‘it always amazes me when you people say “I see” and “Sure”, like it’s everyday stuff.’

‘Isn’t it?’

‘Wow,’ Fred said. ‘Brrrr.’

‘Is this person living in the diocese?’

‘Of course.’

‘Just I haven’t heard about it.’

‘Well, this is the point,’ Fred said. ‘Our friend gets on to his local vicar and asks him if he can do something about this problem. And the local vicar refuses.’

‘Just like that?’

‘More or less.’

‘What did the vicar say to you?’

‘He said, “No comment”.’

Odd
.

‘So what do
you
think? Do you think it’s a genuine case of psychic disturbance?’

‘Hey, that’s not for me to say, is it? What I wanted to ask you was, what is the official policy of the diocese on dealing with alleged cases of, you know, ghostly infestation, whatever you want to call it. Like, if you get something reported to you—’

‘We help where we can,’ Merrily said.

‘And how common is it for you to refuse?’

‘I didn’t refuse. It’s never been referred to me.’

‘No, I mean—’

‘Let me tell you the normal procedure with Deliverance, which is the umbrella term for what we do. A person with a psychic or spiritual problem goes to his or her local priest and explains the situation, then the priest decides whether to handle it personally or pass it on to someone like me, right?’

‘Do they have to tell you about it?’

‘No. I’m here if they need me. Sometimes they’ll just ring
up and ask for a bit of advice, and if it’s something I can tell them I do… or maybe
I
’ll need to seek advice from somebody who knows more about a particular type of… phenomenon than I do.’

‘So, if I say to you now, have you had a call or a report from the Reverend Simon St John, at Knight’s Frome, about a plea for help he’s received from a Mr Stock…?’

‘No, not a word. But the vicar doesn’t have to refer anything to me.’

‘Even if he’s refusing to take any action?’

‘Even if he’s refusing to take any action.’

‘Doesn’t it worry you that there’s someone in the diocese who’s plagued by ghosts and can’t get any help from the Church?’

Merrily had dealt with the media often enough to recognize the point where she was going to be quoted verbatim.

‘Erm… If I was aware of someone in genuine need of spiritual support, I would want to see they received whatever help we were able to give them. But I’d need to know more about the circumstances before I could comment on this particular case. I’m sure the Reverend St John has a good reason for taking the line he’s taken.’

There was a pause, then Fred Potter said, ‘Yep. That’ll do me fine. Thanks very much, Mrs Watkins.’

‘Whoa… hang on. Aren’t you going to give me this guy’s address, phone number…?’

‘Mr Stock? You going to look into it yourself?’

‘Just for the record, Fred.’

‘Oh, all right. Hang on a sec.’

She wrote down Mr Stock’s address. Afterwards, she looked up the number of the Rev. Simon St John. She didn’t know the man, but she thought she ought at least to warn him.

No answer.

Lately, everywhere she tried, there was no answer. Jane would explain this astrologically, suggesting Mercury was retrograde, thus delaying or blocking all forms of communication.

Bollocks.

… Always amazes me when you people say ‘I see’ and ‘sure’, like it’s everyday stuff
.

Merrily gathered up the printed notes for her sermon and walked into the lonely, darkening kitchen.

T
HEY
’
D TURNED
S
TOCK
’
S
kiln-house into Dracula’s castle, rearing against the light, looking to Lol very much as it had on that first, milky night, only darker, more brooding.

…
BLACK HELL

It shrieked at him from the pile of newspapers in the shop, the top copy folded back to page five. Two other customers bought copies while he was still staring.

You believe in ghosts, Lol?

Christ, he hadn’t seen this one coming, had he? Nobody had, judging from the comments in the shop. ‘I’ve heard of this feller,’ a woman in sweatpants told the newsagent. ‘He’s an alcoholic.’

‘On bloody drugs, more like,’ an elderly man said.

The newsagent nodded. ‘Need to be one or the other to live in that place.’

Whichever, it was a development Prof Levin did not need to know about, Lol decided, driving back from Bishop’s Frome with a bunch of papers on the passenger seat. It was eight-thirty, the sun already high: another hot one. Prof was due to leave for London before ten, his cases already stowed in the back of his rotting Range Rover – Abbey Road beckoning. The unstable virtuoso Tom Storey would already be pacing the floor with his old Telecaster strapped on, spraying nervy riffs into the sacred space.

Lol considered leaving the
People
in the Astra until after Prof had gone. Not as if he’d notice; all the time he’d been staying here, Lol had never once seen him open a newspaper; it was only Lol himself who was insecure enough to need to know the planet was still in motion.

In the end, he gathered the papers into a fat stack, with the
Observer
on top, and walked into the stables with it under his arm. He found Prof in the kitchen, connected to his life-support cappuccino machine, froth on his beard.

‘Two things, Laurence. One: when I return, I expect to hear demos of five new songs. No excuses. You get St John over to help. If he don’t want to come, you get his wife to kick him up the behind – metaphorically speaking, in her case, as you’ll find out.’

‘The vicar’s married?’

Prof gave him a narrow look. ‘Why do you ask?’

‘No particular—’

Prof frowned. ‘Robinson, I can read you like the
Sun
. Who’s been talking about the vicar?’

‘What was the second thing? You said two things…’

‘The second thing – maybe I mentioned this before – is you keep that bastard Stock out of here. Bad enough he shows up when I’m around, I don’t want him—
What?
What’s going down? What’s wrong?’

Lol sighed. He didn’t want to pass on Stock’s innuendo about Simon. He unrolled the newspapers:
Observer, Sunday Times, People
. He handed the tabloid to Prof.

‘What’s this crap?’ Prof held up the paper, squinting down through his bifocals. ‘What am I looking at?’

Lol said nothing.

After about half a minute, Prof peered over the page at him, looking uncharacteristically bewildered, glassy-eyed, as if he’d been winded by a punch from nowhere to the stomach. He put down the paper on the upturned packing case he was still using as a breakfast bar.

‘This man,’ he said at last, ‘is the most unbelievable piece of
walking shit it was ever my misfortune to encounter. Is there
nothing
in his life he won’t exploit?’

There were two pictures, one of them tall and narrow, running alongside the story. This was the Dracula’s Castle shot of the kiln house, doctored for dramatic effect. The other, near the foot of the page, showed an unsmiling Gerard Stock, holding a candle in a holder, his arm around a younger woman with curly hair.

OUR BLACK HELL IN THE HOUSE OF HORROR

by Dave Lang

A terrified couple spoke last night of their haunted hell in the grim old house where a relative was brutally murdered
.

And they claimed that a ‘rural mafia’ had condemned them to face the horror alone.

Gerard and Stephanie Stock say their six-month ordeal in the remote converted hop-kiln has driven them to the edge of nervous breakdowns
.

But when they asked the local vicar to perform an exorcism, he refused even to enter the house, which is so dark they need lights on all day, even in summer
.

The couple inherited the 19th century kiln house near Bromyard in Here-fordshire from Mrs Stock’s uncle, Stewart Ash, the author and photographer who was beaten to death there by burglars less than a year ago
.

Since they moved in at the end of last January, the Stocks say they have endured:

•  creeping footsteps on the stairs at night
.

•  strange glowing lights in an abandoned hop-field at the front of the house
.

•  furniture moving around a bloodstain that won’t go away
.

•  an apparition of a hazy figure which walks out of solid brick walls
.

‘
It’s become a complete nightmare,’ said Mr Stock, a 52-year-old public relations consultant. ‘Everybody locally knows there’s something wrong in this place, but it’s as if there’s a conspiracy of silence. It’s a rural Mafia around here. And now it looks as if even the vicar has been “got at”.
’

Turn to page 2

Prof shook his head slowly.

‘Madness, Laurence.’

‘You reckon?’

‘Nah.’ Prof turned over the page and creased the spine of the paper, laid it back on the packing cases next to his coffee cup, contemptuously punched the crease flat with the heel of a fist. ‘Not in a million frigging years. Let me finish this, and then we’ll talk.’

Lol read the story over Prof’s shoulder.

Mr Stock and his thirty-four-year-old wife say the house has proved impossible to heat, and they’ve built up massive
electricity bills, running to hundreds of pounds
.

And the already gloomy house was made even darker when neighbouring landowner Adam Lake built two massive barns either side of it, blocking light from all the side windows
.

Mr Lake has claimed the buildings were necessary for his farming operation
.

But Mr Stock claimed the landowner was furious because both they and Stewart Ash had refused to sell him the house and had the giant barns built to make the haunted kiln impossible to live in
.

‘Lake showed up here once,’ Prof said. ‘Made me an offer for this place even though it wasn’t part of his old man’s original estate. Crazy. The guy’s as mad and arrogant as Stock. Dresses like some old-style squire twice his age. Campaigns for fox-hunting. Jesus!’

‘I saw him the other night.’

‘He’s a buffoon. And he don’t fully realize the kind of desperate bastard he’s up against – though maybe he does now.’

‘You really think Stock’s making all this up, to try and publicly shame Lake into moving those barns?’

‘Look,’ Prof said, ‘Stock’s on his uppers, right? Suddenly he gets a break; he wins a house. With problems attached, sure, but it’s a wonderfully unexpected gift, and he’s determined to capitalize. He wants the very maximum he can get. He’s gonna use whatever skills he’s got, whatever contacts. What’s he got to lose? Nothing, not even his credibility. What’s he got to
gain?
Jesus, those barns go, you can add seventy, eighty thousand to the market value of that place.’