The Ghost Hunters (2 page)

Authors: Neil Spring

I stood, holding my breath, listening hard, squinting into my dim surroundings, and my eye was caught once again by a slight movement next to the seance chair. It was so quick, I might easily have missed it. I approached hesitantly, thinking it might not have been wise to come up here alone. But when I
stood immediately adjacent to the chair, looking quickly about me, I saw nothing, heard nothing, and reminded myself that I was tired. My imagination was playing tricks with me. Still, I was unable to shake the uneasiness and I resolved to leave immediately.

Then, as I turned to walk away, I heard it – something behind me, moving.

I spun round just in time to see a figure shifting in the shadows.

‘Who’s there?’ I called, noticing, to my embarrassment, a tremble in my voice.

An elderly gentleman with half-moon spectacles stepped forward timidly, his sallow face showing an expression somewhere between relief and anxiety. ‘At last,’ he rasped, extending a bony hand to welcome me, ‘you have come.’

So this was John Wesley. ‘How long have you been watching me?’ I asked, thinly disguising my displeasure.

‘Too long, my friend, too long.’ He gave a sad nod, his hands clasped together in nervous expectation. ‘I apologise for startling you but you seemed so intrigued with the collection. Most people are, you know – when it takes hold of you it doesn’t let go.’

‘Tell me why you asked me here,’ I demanded, producing the note he had sent.

A dark expression slid on to his face. ‘This is a sensitive matter but I have something to show you, a manuscript which I would like you to read. If you are willing.’

‘That depends,’ I replied drily. ‘What is it?’

He hesitated. ‘I’ve read your work, Dr Caxton …’ He listed two of my books on his fingers: ‘
Belief and Reason
.
Trauma in Childhood
. All appropriate subjects.’

His smile was making me nervous, and as he stared at me in contemplative silence a thousand little thoughts seemed to flow into his craggy face. I sensed an inner restlessness stirring. Then: ‘Dr Caxton, have you heard of a place called Borley Rectory?’

The name sounded familiar, no more than that. I told him so.

‘Well, you
do
surprise me,’ he continued, beckoning me over to a nearby desk. ‘Borley is an isolated hamlet some sixty-five miles from here. A
troubled
place, to say the least.’

We sat down opposite one another and the curator produced from his cardigan pocket a small black-and-white photograph, which he laid before me. The image was of a gloomy, rambling old mansion from the Victorian era.

‘Borley Rectory,’ he said again, almost under his breath, before his rheumatic hand swept the image aside. ‘Harry Price called this building the most haunted house in England. The things that happened there … Dr Caxton, such terrible things – spectacular events – captivated the nation after the Great War.’ He nodded thoughtfully. ‘People needed something to believe in.’

Though open-minded on matters of the soul and undiscovered abilities of the human mind, I certainly didn’t believe in ghost stories. I had studied too many folk tales for that, had been to led to them by odd yearnings after arcane knowledge; and although I certainly knew of Harry Price’s reputation, I was not especially familiar with the intricacies of his work – his sensational investigations into ghosts.

I watched with rising curiosity as Wesley opened a drawer in the ancient desk, from which he produced a thick leather wallet of the sort used to contain manuscripts, fastened with a small lock. ‘Twenty-two years ago this manuscript was left here with me for safe keeping, the most important document in this collection. No one knows it exists. The archives and manuscripts
catalogue contains no mention of it, nor does it appear in the wider catalogue. In fact you will find no trace, anywhere, of its existence.’

I couldn’t help but feel intrigued by this old man’s tale, his furtive manner. ‘What is it?’ I enquired. ‘A work of fiction?’

‘A confession.’ Wesley smiled mistily and leaned back so that his face was shouded in darkness.

Naturally, I wanted to know how he came by the manuscript. Was it genuine? Why was it important? For reasons clear to me now, the old man did not address my first question. But the issue of its authenticity and significance made his eyes widen and caused him to speak with increased passion.

‘The 12th of June, 1929 – that was the night when the
Daily Mirror
dispatched Harry Price to Borley Rectory so that he could assist their reporter in an investigation. There are various accounts of what happened that night and afterwards, most famously from Harry himself. But this’ – he hesitated, resting his hand on the smooth brown wallet – ‘this is the most extraordinary account of all: the story of what happened at Borley Rectory as experienced by Harry’s secretary and personal assistant, Miss Sarah Grey.’

He flicked a quick glance across the table, as if afraid that someone was listening. ‘Her account, Dr Caxton, is incredible. Terrifying. Tragic. And now I am retiring, the future of this entire collection could be in doubt. I promised to look after this manuscript, but I no longer can. You must take it,’ he insisted, pushing the heavy wallet towards me.

‘Mr Wesley, are you all right?’ I asked. His face was ashen and I sensed there was more he wanted to tell me. ‘You seem troubled.’

He nodded and replied, unconvincingly, that he was fine. ‘Nevertheless,’ he added, ‘you are to have this and tell no one.
I see the future in your eyes – I have followed your work, your clandestine research in folklore and mythology and matters of the mind. You are trustworthy and I have carried the burden long enough. Please, take it.’

And so I did. The wallet felt weighty, important. Although I wanted to open it immediately I had no wish to do so there, under the curator’s melancholy scrutiny. It seems odd admitting this, for I am not an anxious man and I certainly don’t scare easily, but something in Wesley’s tone had affected me. So much so that I wanted suddenly to escape the suffocation of the eighth floor.

‘Excuse me,’ I said, rising, ‘but I must go now. Thank you. I promise I will read this.’

I headed back towards the elevator, trying not to look again at the stone bust or the seance chair, choked with its wires.

‘Doctor Caxton,’ Wesley called after me. ‘Please, read it immediately. Time is short. Sarah … Miss Grey … she would want you to understand. And if you can, try to forgive …’

But I was quickening my pace now, unsettled, confused. Forgive what?

The curator’s icy eyes bored into me.

And the elevator door closed.

Academic curiosity compelled me to open the wallet the instant I arrived home in Oxford. The small lock that had kept the papers safe within for so long broke surprisingly easily. I reached inside and slid the bundle of musty handwritten pages onto my desk. There were drawings too: one of a tall, balding man and a photograph of an attractive young woman with elegant bobbed hair. Her gaze pierced me.

The hour was late. My two little girls were already asleep. When I had made a sandwich and mug of coffee, I told Julia to
go up to bed without me. Then I went into my study where the manuscript was waiting on my desk, and closed the door.

As I read, I was hardly aware of the hours passing, the faded pages seeming to turn themselves; and by the time I was done, the fire beside me had long since died down, its embers glowing like eyes somewhere in the distant past, watching me.

I hope my readers will understand that I have kept this manuscript secret until now because the personal implications of making it public frightened me. I have many reasons for not wanting to delve deeper into a mystery that has already bemused so many and which, I realise now, helps answer so many questions about my own past: why, since a child, I have felt so lost, so out of step with the rest of life. Perhaps I would have kept the document secret always, as John Wesley requested, had he not shown me a particular letter afterwards – a plea for help on which my own future now depends.

I have left the narrative exactly as I discovered it. The only additions I have made are the footnotes, which provide further useful background information to the central events of Miss Sarah Grey’s story and occasional commentary on the author’s observations.

Ultimately, it is for the reader to decide the veracity of Miss Grey’s tale and the significance of its events. But for reasons that will become apparent, I am as certain as I can be that this story is true.

Dr Robert Caxton

London, 1977