‘I really don’t know.’
‘Who put him in it?’
‘I did.’
‘Are you sure that you put it on properly?’
‘Yes. Quite sure.’
‘Then how . . . ?’ Incomprehension prevented his sentence from reaching its conclusion.
What could I say? That I believed a poltergeist was responsible? ‘There must be something wrong with the fastenings,’ I said firmly.
‘Have you checked them?’
‘Yes. To be honest, I can’t find anything amiss, but that’s the only explanation.’
‘Unless . . .’ He invited me to consider the less palatable alternative.
‘Unless I am mistaken and I wasn’t paying sufficient attention when I secured the straps.’
‘It happens, you know. I assume Mr Chapman was struggling.’
‘Yes, he was.’
His next comment was preceded by an ambiguous beat of silence. ‘I’m sure you did your best.’
Maitland then asked me if any of the nightingales had been significantly affected.
‘Nurse McAllister and Nurse Gray saw the worst of it. But I think they’ll be all right.’
‘Good,’ he responded. It never ceased to amaze me how Maitland was always so considerate with respect to
his
nightingales. ‘Please make a point of thanking them for me – for their dedication and courage.’
We spoke for a few more minutes and Maitland informed me that he intended to visit Wyldehope in a few days. I wasn’t expecting his garbled, sympathetic farewell. ‘Look, James. I wanted to say: it can’t have been easy for you lately. I realize that. What with Christmas – and now this business with Chapman. You’ve had a lot to deal with. Let’s hope things calm down a bit now, eh?’
It was a sentiment I shared. But things didn’t calm down. And worse was yet to come.
I dreamt of the lighthouse, once again. I saw its penumbral outline against the starless sky, its yellow beam sweeping across the slowly moving waves, and heard the harsh noise that accompanied each revolution of the lamp. There was something about this image that now filled me with a terrible, unspeakable dread. The fear was formless, overwhelming, and found expression in a cry of terror that woke me up. The gloomy seascape persisted for a moment and then shattered as if it had been painted onto broken glass.
Darkness and preternatural cold: that is what I remember. The curtains were drawn and must have been overlapping, because I could see absolutely nothing. There was no strip of sky, made faintly luminous by a hidden moon or a scattering of stars. The fear that had accompanied the lighthouse dream had survived the dream’s dissolution, and it became, if anything, more intense. I did not move, because of a strong sense of expectation that made me hold my breath and listen intently. When I blinked, I could hear my eyelashes on the pillow. I had no idea what I was waiting for but the presumption was so strong I was all but paralysed. My frozen state revived memories of childhood: the indisputable reality of monsters beneath the bed, inhabiting their shadowy realm of dust and silence – always ready to pounce. I was lying on my side, my knees raised and my back rounded. As I might have done when I was a small boy, I gripped the blanket and attempted to cover my head with it, but my efforts met with resistance. I assumed that the edges had been tucked tightly beneath the mattress and pulled somewhat harder. To my utter astonishment, I felt a response. It was as though a rival had taken hold of the other end and was now pulling in the opposite direction.
The terror that I experienced was wholly physical and confirmed the descriptive cliché of flesh ‘crawling’. A tingling sensation rippled over my body and my scalp prickled as each hair began to rise.
I clutched the blanket tightly, but it began to slip from my fingers. There was a sudden wrench and my protective cover was whipped away. The top sheet, blanket and eiderdown flew across the room and landed heavily near the window. I was naked and my sudden exposure reminded me of how cold it was. The fear that had had its origin in the lighthouse dream continued to compromise my ability to take action, and I remained in a state of petrified immobility. If human beings possess a sixth sense, then it must have been through this channel that I received impressions of movement: something travelling from the far corner of the room, past the foot of the bed, and then coming to a standstill beside me.
It is frequently written that the greatest threat posed by the supernatural is to the mind. There is nothing to fear, so they say, except fear itself. But I was in the presence of a power that could raise a man up and cast him down again, a power that could break a leg and fracture bones, a power that might levitate my bed and send it sailing through the window.
I imagined myself hopelessly flailing in the updraught of rushing air, plummeting to my death. What would they say about me? He was odd, like his predecessor, Palmer. He went crazy after an unhappy love affair. He spent too much time in his rooms, alone.
It was coming closer. My eyes were wide open, I could see nothing, but I knew that it was coming closer. This perception was confirmed when I heard a sigh next to my exposed ear. There was a faint sibilance, two syllables of equal length, but lacking in articulation. These words, if they were words, were unintelligible. I began to tremble and, irrationally, closed my eyes. I kept them tightly shut, pressing the lids together, attempting to interpose at least something between my conscious self and the poltergeist. The passage of time was no longer marked out in minutes and seconds but aeons and eternities. I felt the mattress sag, as it might if someone had just sat down on the edge of the bed. The springs groaned and the sheet tilted downwards. I wanted to scream. I wanted to open my mouth and scream so loudly that Hartley, someone, anyone, would come to my rescue; however, when I tried, I experienced the disconnection between intention and action so typical of nightmares. I produced a tremulous, asthmatic wheeze and my mouth was so dry, when I swallowed, it felt like I was choking.
If the poltergeist meant to harm me, there would be no escape. There had been no escape for Mary Williams or Michael Chapman – and there would be no escape for me. I pressed my eyelids even more tightly together and braced myself for violence, the sudden release of impossible forces. What actually happened shocked me far more than anything I had expected.
I felt spidery fingers repositioning my hair with exquisite gentleness, a touch that was as light and insubstantial as a puff of air. Then a hand landed on my own. For a few moments, it stayed there, the fleshy palm pressing against my knuckles; however, an instant later, the contact was terminated. The mattress springs produced an ascending scale of indeterminate pitches and the sheet beneath me became level again. I could still sense the poltergeist’s progress, as it drifted to the door, where it stopped, to turn the handle. The hinges complained and a draught caressed my cheeks. I heard a curious metallic impact followed by a high-pitched chime that quickly faded. After this, there was nothing but the soft conspiracies of the sea, wind and shingle. I don’t know how long I lay there for. When I finally opened my eyes, I was confronted by the same unyielding darkness, but the atmosphere in the room had changed. There was no imminence, no sense of something about to happen.
Even after such an experience, habitual rationalism made me reconsider, once again, the tired explanations I had rejected months earlier: hypnopompic hallucination and so on. But it was a sterile exercise, empty intellectualism. In reality I was certain that something very remarkable had happened, particularly so with respect to the ‘touching’, which seemed to have been imitative of my small ministrations in the sleep room.
I switched on the lamp. When my eyes had adjusted to the light I looked around the room. Apart from the conspicuous and untidy pile of bed coverings under the window, it looked much the same as it always did. The face of my alarm clock showed four thirty. There was little chance of me going back to sleep again, so I put on my dressing gown, picked up the dirty teacup from the night before, and crossed the hallway to the kitchen. I filled the kettle with water, put it on the stove, and lit a cigarette.
My limbs felt heavy. I was exhausted. Not in some trivial way, but profoundly so, the result of a cumulative, ongoing process that would, if left unchecked, bring about my mental and physical collapse.
It was impossible to go on. I realized that now. Palmer had understood the situation and I should have listened more carefully to his advice. A sane man couldn’t live under these conditions – at least, not without unburdening himself now and again. And this was the nub of it. A psychiatrist cannot admit to seeing things that cannot be explained. As soon as he does so, he crosses the line that separates himself from his patients.
I would have to resign. Maitland would be furious and my prospects might be damaged, but there really wasn’t any alternative.
The kettle boiled and steam billowed out of the spout. Condensation appeared on the window and I turned off the gas. I picked up my used teacup and was about to rinse it under the tap when I noticed something at the bottom, partly submerged beneath the brown residue and dregs. It was a wedding ring.
I fished out the plain band and dried it on my dressing gown. It was darker and larger than the one I had found before, the one that had belonged to Palmer’s young wife. I turned the gold beneath the light bulb and watched a yellow spark chase around its circumference. For some reason, I had a strong urge to put it on. I held it close to the end of my ring finger, but could not bring myself to penetrate the inviting circularity. Moreover, I was overcome by a dreadful feeling of despair. A paroxysm of grief that made my breath catch. I had come close to proposing to Jane, and the ring represented a loss that, in truth, I had barely come to terms with. In fact, as I stood there gazing at the ring, I found the courage to be honest with myself. I had underestimated the emotional impact of everything: not only the poltergeist (or whatever that capricious spirit might be), but the wearing intensity of my relationship with Maitland, Jane’s betrayal, Mary Williams, Chapman and the sleep room. I had fooled myself into believing that a combination of hard work and bloody-mindedness would be enough to see me through, but I was less robust than I had imagined.
At six thirty I went down to the wards where I found Sister Jenkins.
‘Where did you find it?’ she asked, tilting her hand beneath the desk lamp. The fit was snug.
‘In my bedroom.’ I no longer cared what she thought.
‘But how could it have got up there?’ Her features acquired the fixity that comes with burgeoning suspicion.
‘I have no idea,’ I replied, already walking away.
In my diary, I noticed that Edward Burgess was due for his final appointment. I had seen him a few times since Maitland had treated him with excitatory abreaction, and since then Mr Burgess had been getting steadily better. He was less anxious, his nightmares had subsided, and he no longer suffered from transient paralysis. Although he looked much the same – sloping brow, deep-set eyes – his features had filled out and the tightness of his jacket suggested that his appetite had returned.
‘Well,’ I said, at the conclusion of our interview. ‘I don’t think you need to come here again. Do you?’
‘No,’ he agreed. ‘I’m feeling very well indeed. Thank you.’
As he stood to leave, he looked at me rather too closely. ‘Are you all right, doctor?’
‘What do you mean by that?’ I asked.
‘You look tired.’
‘I am. I didn’t get much sleep last night and I have a headache.’ We walked down the corridor and out onto the landing. ‘Is your driver waiting outside?’ I asked.
‘Yes. He is. Don’t come any further, Dr Richardson. There’s no need. I can see myself out.’ Burgess stopped and looked around at the staircase and vestibule. His expression was not admiring. ‘Not sure I’d like to work here. Strange old place, isn’t it?’ Our eyes locked and he seemed about to say something else, but instead he shook his head and smiled.
‘Goodbye,’ I said. ‘Keep well.’ He nodded, buttoned up his coat and descended the stairs. When he got to the door, he turned round and shouted up at me. ‘If you feel like a change of scenery, come to Lowestoft. There’s a fancy restaurant. Just opened. I’d be happy to buy you lunch.’
I leaned over the stair rail and called down, ‘That’s very kind of you.’
He raised his hand. ‘I hope your headache gets better.’ He then opened the door and stepped outside. Sunlight was streaming through the windows and the air was saturated with a heady smell, like tar or paraffin. As I pushed myself away from the banisters I noticed that one of the carved animals had a blackened face. I crouched down and examined the woodwork more closely. It had been scorched. The varnish had bubbled up and when I stroked my finger over the damaged area a sooty residue came off on my fingers. I wiped my hands clean with my handkerchief and returned to the outpatient suite where I began writing Mr Burgess’s discharge summary.
It must have been about one fifteen when I heard one of the nurses approaching. I was already looking up, expectantly, when Nurse Fraser appeared. She stood in the doorway looking somewhat flustered.
‘Yes?’ I prompted her.
‘Dr Richardson . . .’ she began. ‘We have a problem. The sleep-room patients . . .’
‘What about them?’
‘We can’t wake them up.’
‘I’m sorry?’
She lifted her arms and let them fall by her side. ‘We can’t wake them up.’ The repetition of the same phrase did not make it any more believable.
I put my pen down. ‘Which patients?’ I asked. ‘Who can’t you wake?’
‘All of them,’ she replied.
18
In the sleep room, I found Sister Jenkins anxiously pacing between the beds. Nurse Page was standing next to a trolley on which six covered meals had been stacked.
‘Dr Richardson,’ said Sister Jenkins, beckoning me to her side. ‘This is most peculiar.’
‘You can’t wake them up?’
‘No.’ She reached out and shook Sarah Blake’s shoulders. Then, positioning her mouth next to the sleeping patient’s ear, she said loudly, ‘Sarah. Wake up. It’s time for lunch.’ Another vigorous shake was equally ineffective. Sarah Blake’s head lolled from side to side but her eyes remained closed. ‘They’re all the same,’ Sister Jenkins went on, ‘completely unresponsive. I don’t understand it.’