Hauntings Page 12

  “Thank you. Most kind. You see, Gooch is of the opinion that an ordinary locomotive will work as well, and be of less cost, but I have a great reservation about the grades. I visited Dalkey a week ago and saw the system there.”

  “And were you impressed?”

  “Most favourably so.” I clapped him on the shoulder. “It is time to get to work, Mr Potts. We have the spring and summer at our disposal, so let us make the most of them.”

  ~*~

  And so we did. By the following September, the tunnel had been run through the cliff and we had the start of a working atmospheric railway. It was, to my chagrin, already clear that the new railway would be significantly more expensive than its conventional alternative: nearly twice the cost to run. The engines would have to pump longer than expected, and this increased the amount estimated. We forged ahead nonetheless and I was, naturally, one of the first to try the new system. As we hurtled through the darkness underneath the cliff, I was cautiously pleased.

  It was only on the second trial run that the incident occurred. For some reason, the pumping mechanism failed as we were halfway through the tunnel, leaving us stranded beneath the cliff. We sat for a moment in a kind of ticking silence.

  “Hmmm!” Gooch remarked. “Something has gone awry.”

  “Rather obviously!” I rose and walked the length of the carriage. “We will have to sit here until they get the pump working again – it is probably that which has failed. Never mind, it is all a question of experiment and I like to think that no time is ever wasted. Do you think –” I turned, to find that Gooch had vanished. His seat was quite empty. I gaped at it. Gooch was not forthcoming. In his place, however, was a man I did not know: a curly haired man with a pointed beard and dark eyes, his face pale above a short lacy ruff.

  “Who the Devil are you, sir?” I demanded. “And what are you doing on my train?”

  “I might ask the same of you!” he retorted. “And what manner of contraption is this? Good God!” He was staring past my left shoulder. I turned, to see a howling, contorted countenance behind me, framed in a wild mass of hair and beard.

  “What the –” I began to say, but the train gave a sudden jolt and began to move again. Both my companions were gone and there was Gooch, poring over a diagram.

  “…impossible to read in this light,” he was saying.

  I sank into my seat. If I told him of my experience, he would consider me quite mad. While I was debating whether to risk it, a faint glow of light appeared at the end of the tunnel and we were hurtling out into the September sunshine.

  I did not think I had imagined the episode, but I was at a loss to explain it otherwise. A kind of waking dream? A vision? I’d never been prone to such. But the howling visage, in particular, had unnerved me, and that night, I woke with a start to find myself drenched in a clammy sweat. There had been a dream – but I could not remember.

  Next day, we tested the railway again and this time Gooch did not accompany me, being on an errand at the pump station. I was not disappointed: this time, we would see what occurred. This time, there was no hitch: the train did not stop, but as we entered the tunnel I saw, with horror, that the maniacal face was back, hovering in a silent scream at the far end of the carriage. As the train rushed onwards, the face shot towards me as if it had been fired from a cannon and I found myself bowled onto the carriage floor and sprawling. The creature was above me, it raised a club made of a bone and was about to bring it down when a woman wearing a long pale gown flashed past it. The face disappeared. I had a brief glimpse of the man in the ruff, but then he was no longer there and we were out of the tunnel.

  Gathering my courage, I left the train at the platform and announced that I would be heading into the tunnel itself to check some measurements. Then I walked back along the track. I took a lamp and a shovel with me – I had not liked the look of that club – and if anyone thought this to be strange, they did not say so. But I had no reason to use the shovel, at least. The tunnel was dark and quiet, smelling strongly of earth and a little of the sea. I walked its length and then, when nothing had happened, I turned from one circle of light back into its depths and walked it again. I saw nothing except roots and the occasional worm. I concluded that the experience of the train, perhaps its speed, had caused some form of vision in me. Maybe my body or my mind had been affected by the experience of nearly choking, those few years before. Turning over these thoughts in my mind, I hastened back to the platform, where the train was once again due to enter the tunnel and begin its return run.

  I saw nothing – at least, until the carriages once more slowed to a halt. The same fault as before had manifested. Anxiously, I peered down the carriage: no one was visible. But then – a sudden crack, a terrible pain, a shimmer of unearthly light, and I was falling, down into the black.

  ~*~

  I blinked. The light was blinding, sun pouring in through the glass windows and warming my skin. I was lying on the floor of the pumping station with Gooch and the others gathered around me.

  “What… happened?”

  “Sir, we do not know. The train emerged from the tunnel and we found you like this – you were quite insensible. We tried to rouse you, but could not.”

  “I think I must be unwell,” I said. “For a little time now, I’ve been having – visions.”

  Gooch looked baffled, as well he might. “Visions?”

  “Yes.” Briefly, I explained. I saw a look pass between them and I knew what it meant. “I think it would be advisable to call for a medic,” I said.

  The doctor, who was of the bluff country sort, said that I had doubtless been working too hard and should rest. I did so, with reluctance, spending a tedious day in bed with the newspapers. At three o clock I was greatly cheered to see Gooch coming up to the house, but when he entered my room, he was utterly white in the face.

  “What is it, man?” I forgot I was supposed to be ill and sprang to my feet.

  “Those – things you said you saw, Sir. I’ve seen them, too.”

  “Good God!”

  Gooch, normally a man of stern nerves, was now pale and shaking. He collapsed into an armchair and accepted the cup of tea that I pressed into his hand.

  “I saw – a woman, all dressed in white. And someone was chasing her down the carriage. I have never seen such a thing before, I am quite undone.”

  “There has to be an explanation,” I said. “Perhaps some compression of the air? The speed?”

  “If it is the speed,” Gooch said, recovering somewhat, “then why are ordinary trains not filled with apparitions?”

  “A good question.” I made up my mind. “Gooch, come with me. I’m going down to the pumping station.”

  I dressed hastily while Gooch drank the rest of his tea, then we set off. I issued instructions to the station personnel, then told Gooch to supervise.

  “Where will you be?”

  “On the train.”

  He blanched. “Are you certain?”

  “I will not risk another person. I must determine the cause of all this. I cannot have passengers subjected to apparitions and spectres.”

  “If you are sure –” but I did not think he was entirely unhappy at being left behind.

  I took the shovel with me, and this time I took care to stand with my back to the carriage wall. The train set off once more, and once more jerked to a standstill: on this occasion, deliberately. They were there again and the howling man raced towards me. I raised the shovel, but as I swung it in grim determination, a single sharp point appeared through the madman’s body and he vanished. The man with the ruff stood behind, holding a rapier.

  “I am much indebted to you, sir!” I said. “Who are you?”

  “My name? Francis Drake. I confess I am surprised that you do not know me.”

  “Sir,” I said, “I do. Your name has been a legend in the south west for over two hundred years.”

  His eyebrows went up. “You are suggesting, sir, that I am dead.”

>   “I fear that in my day and age, you are.”

  He gave a sigh. “To be frank, I had thought as such. It has often seemed to me that the land has been changing around me, in ways which I cannot fully apprehend. You may not know that in life I was magician as much as sailor and courtier. I saw much of this manner of happening in those days – but the conjuration of spirits has always been a chancy art.”

  “Do you think that this is what I have done? I am an engineer, not a magic worker.”

  Drake frowned. “I don’t know what that word means. Did you conjure me? And the others – that man I ran through I have seen before, now I come to think of it. Someone from the far past. Is it possible for a ghost to be driven mad, I wonder?”

  “Perhaps. In answer to your question, no, this was not a deliberate conjuration. It was an accident.”

  His frown deepened. “It seemed to me that I was walking along the shore, that it was a clear afternoon in spring. And that all of an instant I felt a great tearing, grasping sensation as though someone had reached out a giant hand and pulled me through – into this most curious place.” He was looking around the carriage now. “It is a little like a ship’ cabin, but…”

  A suspicion which I had been entertaining was now beginning to be confirmed.

  “Sir,” I said, “Tell me more about the sensation which brought you here. Was it like a wind, or -?”

  “Perhaps more akin to a whirlpool, in which one is sucked downwards. Only this was sideways.”

  “I see.” I bowed. “I am now going to make this – craft – go forwards once more. I have a notion and I would put it into practice.” I pulled the cord to which we had attached a large bell: once Gooch heard it, at the other end of the tunnel, he would start the carriage moving once more. With a now-familiar jolt, the train began to move and Drake, with a startled cry, was gone.

  ~*~

  “It seems to me,” I said to Gooch, “that the process of atmospherics has, most inadvertently, acted as a kind of suction device for spirits, bringing the shades of the departed forwards into the present. The tunnel is not, in itself, haunted, but our device has caused it to become so.”

  “A day ago I would have said you had gone mad,” Gooch remarked. “But now –”

  “Quite.”

  If there was some way of reversing the process – the way in which the vacuum was created, perhaps… If we had sucked the spirits into our world, we needed some way of propelling them back again. I needed to invent a device…

  ~*~

  A week later, we stood at the mouth of the tunnel once more. The device had been created at the pumping station, with an amplificatory engine mounted on the train itself. The idea was to create a kind of reverse vacuum: opening up a portal in whichever world the spirits resided, to propel them back to it once more. Gooch and I would work the device on the train as we travelled through the tunnel under atmospheric pressure. I did not know if it would work but I had hope: and not just for my own self, for the safety and peace of mind of future passengers, but also for the spirits themselves. I had a duty to them, it seemed to me.

  Halfway through the tunnel, I pulled the cord that set the machine in motion: it was like a great fan, reversed, a moving cylinder. It whirred into life just as the first spirit, the woman in the pale gown, shot through the end of the carriage – and vanished into vapour. The howling ancient was, to my considerable relief, next. Then Drake, who had just enough time to glance about him, remarking “Ah!” before he, too, was whirled into the dark. More followed, looking to be farmers, or labourers, including a man with a dreadful wound along his face. I could only conclude that these were all people who had died by violence, or who, like Drake, had played an important role in the life of this old coast. When the final spectre had disappeared, I turned to Gooch.

  “I think, my friend,” I said, “that we can consider this a job well done.”

  “I think we may,” he replied, “And yet –” He hesitated.

  “And yet?”

  “Shouldn’t we have reached the end of the tunnel by now?”

  I rushed to the window of the carriage and looked out. Instead of the garnet soil and shadows, the approaching estuary, there was an expanse of darkness, roiling with flickering lights. Great skeins of stars reached beneath us, sparkling like fire.

  “Good Lord,” said Gooch, “Where are we?”

  For the train was travelling onwards, on invisible rails. In endeavouring to return the spirits, I had succeeded in propelling us through that selfsame gap.

  “I do not know,” I said. But already my mind was working furiously, calculating a way to return us to Starcross, and the tunnel’s end.

  Forward and Back, Change Places

  Marion Pitman

  Paul walked from the tube station through the north London dusk, climbed the stone steps, and looked around as he entered the hall. He hadn’t been here for years, not since he’d moved south of the river, but tonight a particularly good ceilidh band was playing, and he felt the urge to dance.

  The band was setting up; already quite a few people were sitting about the room and chatting. Paul saw a few vaguely familiar faces, but no one he knew well enough to go and talk to. He put his coat down on a seat, and went to get a beer.

  He sat out the first two dances, but then got up his nerve to ask a middle-aged woman he recognised from somewhere; after that he found it easier, and since there was as usual a shortage of men, he found a partner for every dance before the interval.

  The bar was packed in the break, so Paul went into the side room where they served tea and cake and sandwiches. This was emptier, but there were no free tables, so he took his tea and fruitcake to a corner table where a plump, dark man was sitting alone.

  “Excuse me, do you mind if I sit here?”

  “Go ahead!” The dark man beamed. Paul wondered if he were looking for someone to talk to, and hoped he wasn’t a bore; Paul wasn’t good at getting away from bores. He sat down, stirred his tea, although he didn’t take sugar, and broke a piece off his cake.

  The dark man said, “Haven’t seen you here before, have I?”

  “No, I don’t get up here often.”

  “Come far?”

  “Not too far. Takes me an hour or so.” Warily not saying where he lived, until he knew whether the other were a bore or not.

  “Ah! I live quite close. Good band, aren’t they?”

  “Very good. Came to hear them, really. Very good to dance to.”

  “I’m Gilbert.”

  He held out his hand, and Paul felt obliged to take it, saying, “Paul.”

  However, the subsequent conversation was quite pleasant, and Gilbert did not reveal any particular obsession or monotony of thought. Paul finished his tea and cake, and stood up.

  Gilbert said, “Enjoy the second half,” as though he were not staying, and Paul went back into the hall.

  She must have come in during the interval. She was already whirling round in a Cumberland Square Eight when he saw her – tall, slim, with long, red hair – he only caught a glimpse of her face, but it did something to him. He sat down, feeling a little dizzy. He hadn’t felt like that about anyone since he was fourteen. He tried to pull himself together. The dance finished; she walked off with a group of people, and while he was still wondering if he dared go and ask her to dance, she stood up again, with a tall fair-haired man in a blue shirt.

  Paul was still staring at that end of the room when a voice said, “Are you doing this one?” and he turned and saw one of the women he’d danced with earlier. He stood up – he wasn’t sure what they danced, but it was one he knew, and he didn’t make any major mistakes. By the time it finished, he’d decided he must get a grip. He would try to speak to the red-haired woman, but it would be ridiculous not to dance as much as possible now he’d come all this way. No doubt once he spoke to her she would turn out to be quite ordinary.

  He determined to enjoy the rest of the evening, and succeeded pretty well; he glimpsed her
often, but she was always in another set; he thought he might catch her up in a circle dance where the women changed partners, but she was still two couples away when the music ended. At the end of the evening they were in the same set for Drops of Brandy, and he thought he must get to swing her by the arm at least once; but some other couple went wrong, and suddenly she was moving away from him again.

  At the end, someone spoke to him, and when he turned around again she was nowhere to be seen.

  Oh well, he sighed, that was that. He put on his coat and made for the bus stop, expecting to forget the whole thing.

  ~*~

  He didn’t forget, though. The thought of the woman with red hair kept coming back to him, and the magical feeling he’d had at the sight of her. No matter how he told himself she would be quite ordinary if he spoke to her, she stayed in his mind, until there was nothing for him to do but go back to the next month’s ceilidh, and hope that she might be there. If he did that, he would have done all he could; but he must do that.

  ~*~

  He was rather later this time; the dancing had already started, and he saw her on the far side of the hall, partnering the tall fair man again. If she had a boyfriend there was really no point in speaking to her at all. Paul found a seat and took off his coat; at the end of that dance he tried to work up the courage simply to walk across the room, and stand near her, and perhaps start a conversation with someone in the same group, but his heart was pounding ridiculously, and by the time he was halfway there they were making up sets for the next dance.

  It went on like that through the first half; between dances he would work his way towards her, and then she would move off suddenly, or he would get in a conversation and not know how to end it; somehow he was again never in the same set, except once, in a longways dance, where he followed her, at five couples distance, from one end to the other, and the dance ended before she and her partner turned and came back. It was maddening, and the more it happened, the worse were his nerves. At the interval he thought he might find her in the bar, but she wasn’t there. He looked into the tea room – she was sitting at the far side, at a table with four other people, all talking animatedly. Paul sighed, bought a cup of tea, and saw Gilbert, once more sitting on his own.