The Ghosts of Sleath

  The wheel shifted, perhaps a millimetre, certainly no more than that, and the cog-wheels inside the millhouse stirred. They, too, creaked and groaned and strained against the shackles of grime and rot that had bound them for so very long. Cobwebs draped from rafters moved as a chill breeze passed through the old disused building, and dust drifted in the air to settle long after the sounds had died away and everything was still again.

  Dr Robert Stapley had never been a good sleeper. Even as a student doctor nearly fifty years ago, his brain and his energy had been too restless, his enthusiasm too rampant, to accommodate the calmness conducive to contented slumber. And decline, that ineludible moderator of all excesses, while dulling the restlessness and enthusiasm, had merely become an ally to insomnia; perhaps the habit was too well established for old age and its detriments to have any worthy influence. Indeed, during the past ten years he doubted he would have managed any sleep at all without the help of a half-tablet of nitrazepam taken with warm milk and a stiff shot of Grouse just before he turned in each night. Even then sleep came gradually, weariness - ever present these days - slowly succumbing to exhaustion, exhaustion eventually capitulating to oblivion. Perhaps guilt was the culprit in these latter years, memories the spur. So many things to forget … why didn’t age and diminishing brain cells play their part in that too?

  His rheumy eyes stared at the open book over spectacles that had slipped to the end of his nose and to him the words were just neat lines of tiny creatures marching in unison across the page with no purpose and no import.

  He remembered. He remembered those he had allowed to die. Not deliberately, not intentionally - neglect was mostly a matter of carelessness rather than design. He remembered their names and in his mind’s eye he saw their faces. One by one they paraded before him, accusation in their sad, staring eyes, pointing their fingers as if he alone were responsible and God was merely the bystander. Not his fault, not his fault. How could any physician be held accountable for lives that had come to their natural or inevitable end? How could every single diagnosis or response be impeccable? Doctors were human, they made mistakes like anyone else. But there were different kinds of mistakes, a small, tormenting voice told him. There were blunders and misjudgements, there were confusions and lapses. But there was also disregard and failure, wasn’t there? Well, wasn’t there? And of course, there was murder.

  The book slipped from his lap and he let it lie there at his feet. Yes, yes, he replied to the tormentor that was his own guilt, there were all these things. But murder? Could he admit to that? Could he deny it? He twisted in the armchair, reaching for the Grouse bottle on the little round occasional table by his side. He poured himself another measure and contemplated the other, smaller, bottle on the table. The other half of the sleeping pill? Should he take it? It would make him so drowsy the next day if he did. But did that really matter? He slumped back in the seat. Yes, it mattered. How could he function properly if his mind was in a daze and his reactions lethargic? But other pills could take care of that. As they had in the past. As they had only too regularly. What was it they said about living in a sweet shop? You soon lost your taste for sweet things. If only that were true of the medical profession where the analogy might be apt - for sweets substitute drugs - but in truth, where availability so often led to dependency.

  Leave it for now. Give it another twenty minutes or so. If he wasn’t sleepy by then, what the hell, take the other half of nitrazepam. And another shot of scotch. Find oblivion, that elusive anaesthetic. No more thoughts then, no more tired remembrances to haunt the present.

  He lifted the tumbler and sipped the scotch. My, how your hand shivers, dear Doctor. How the glass rim blurs and the golden liquid agitates in your grip. Is it the coldness of the night or the bleakness in your soul that causes the trembling? Who could know the truth? Only you.

  He took another drink, throwing his head back and swallowing hard, hoping the alcohol would warm him, praying it would smother his unease. It was chilly in his room. He glanced towards the window to see if he had left it open: the darkness outside pressed against the windowpanes as if eager to gain entry. So dark out there, so very black. The clock on the mantel told him it was twelve minutes past one.

  Ye Gods, had he really sat here that long? He had settled down in the armchair with his book around ten o’clock in the evening, the whisky bottle brand new, as yet unopened. Now the bottle was less than half-full and he was only half-inebriated. Perhaps he would need to unlock the drugs cabinet downstairs in the surgery if he was to find peace this night. A small injection, a careful dose. Sometimes it was the only way.

  He wondered how Edmund got through nights like this. Badly, was his guess, for even his God would not comfort him. Solace could only come through contrition for a holy man and that was a course no longer open to the Reverend Edmund Lockwood. The poor man had severely degenerated with the burden of it all, alarmingly so since the death of his wife, and his suffering must be terrible. But then, wasn’t it so for all the others involved?

  Like you, for instance? You were dedicated - or were supposed to be dedicated - to saving lives and he, the clergyman, was dedicated - or was supposed to be dedicated - to saving souls: so who was more guilty then, who should carry the greater culpability? Answer me that, dear Doctor.

  He drained the glass and poured another. The heat was welcome as it scorched his throat and warmed his chest, but even so his hand continued to shake.

  If only Beardsmore had not come to Sleath, for he was the instigator, his twisted, deviant ways had caused the revivification of something dreadful. Something secret.

  But you enjoyed the perversions, didn’t you? You enjoyed the revival.

  ‘I was drawn in, we were all drawn in!’ The doctor’s voice resounded around the room and for a panic-filled moment he feared for his own sanity. For the first time he had answered aloud the voice inside his own head.

  He brought a hand up to his face and covered his eyes. ‘Oh dear God,’ he moaned.

  He stiffened when he heard a noise downstairs. He listened, alert now to things other than his own thoughts. A different noise, a kind of shuffling. And voices, he thought he heard voices. Coming up through the ceiling. But it couldn’t be; this sitting room was directly above the waiting room adjoining his surgery and it was always kept locked at night. As were the front and back doors to the house itself, and these were bolted too. And because drugs were kept on the premises all the downstairs windows had locks fitted; the more accessible ones even had bars on the outside. Nobody could possibly get in. It had been tried once or twice, but the house was totally secure.

  So how the hell could anyone have got inside?

  The sounds seemed to fluctuate from a murmur to a whisper, as if someone nearby were tuning through wavelengths on a radio set, or constantly increasing and decreasing the volume. His hand still shivering, the doctor placed the glass tumbler back on the occasional table, then with an effort got to his feet, using the arms of the chair to support himself. He felt very weak that night.

  The whispering-murmuring continued as he stood there by the armchair, and he listened and waited - waited for the voices to fade. They didn’t. He heard soft laughter - no, more like sniggering, a dirty kind of nasal chuckling. It sounded … somehow … unearthly.

  Nonsense! These voices were in his mind, or perhaps from a television set or radio from a house nearby, freakish atmospherics carrying the sounds so that they appeared to come from the room below. Oh, he’d heard the rumours insinuating their way around the village. Something odd was going on in Sleath they said. Yes, something odd was going on all right - yesterday young Danny Marsh had been beaten and mutilated to within an inch of his wretched life, and last night Jack Buckler had been murdered - but it had nothing to do with hauntings and that kind of rubbish. As the saying went, there were no such things as ghosts. And rogues like this person - what was his name? Ash, yes, something-or-other Ash - were only too ready to exploit the fears and gullibi
lity of stupid and credulous people. Psychic investigator indeed! Sheer bloody nonsense! How foolish of Grace Lockwood to engage the services of the man. Surely her father had no part in that! Surely he hadn’t become that feeble-minded. It might be an idea to call on Edmund tomorrow and have a few quiet words with him. Goodness knows, it was his duty as the vicar’s doctor and long-time friend to express some concern for the man’s deteriorating health. In fact, a professional call was long overdue. (But there was a reason for that, wasn’t there, a very good reason for neither one of you wishing to look into the other’s eyes? How could you not be embarrassed by the deep shame you would find in each other’s gaze, eh? Eh?) He shook his head as if to dismiss this sly, inner voice. Tomorrow he would tell Edmund Lockwood that he, himself, had witnessed this man Ash making enquiries at the Black Boar and he hadn’t liked the look of the man on sight. His untidiness apparently went with his shoddy profession and, if his judgement as a doctor was anything to go by, the man seemed a little too fond of a drink. It might be just as well if this so-called investigator’s services were cancelled immediately.

  The murmuring from downstairs swelled just enough to interrupt his thoughts. It faded, became a quiet drone again.

  Dr Stapley stared at the floor as if he could see through to the room below. Was he really hearing voices? He put quivering fingertips against his temples. Or were they merely inside his mind? Had the guilt and the anxiety that went with it finally got to him? Was the lack of sleep and the illicit use of certain substances at last breaking him?

  He suddenly smiled, and then laughed, a thin sound that held no humour, but which rang around the room in hollow approbation of his own deduction. Of course, you stupid, stupid fool! It was a radio, and it was downstairs! One of his younger patients must have left it in the waiting room some time during the day - he’d seen at least two teenagers in surgery hours and everyone knew how impatient youngsters got when they had to wait for more than two minutes. One of them had obviously brought in their transistor radio or Walkman or whatever it was they carried about with them these days and had left it behind. It made sense. He hadn’t heard it earlier because it was turned low and he had been absorbed in his own thoughts all evening; naturally it was only late at night or in the early hours of the morning that the sound seemed amplified; or it might even have been a build-up of power that had increased the volume. It had been on all afternoon and evening, but it was only now that it penetrated the floorboards beneath his feet! Oh what an idiot he was.

  He picked up what was left of his drink and held the tumbler aloft in toast of his own sound reasoning before taking a long gulp of the scotch; this time it tasted stale and its warmth had little effect. Still the murmurings from downstairs intruded upon his thoughts.

  ‘Oh bloody hell,’ he muttered under his breath. Have to go down and turn the dratted thing off. Couldn’t let it drone away all night, or until the batteries wore out. He put the glass down and went to the sideboard where he took out a set of keys from a drawer. Dr Stapley hated the rooms downstairs after surgery hours even more than he had come to hate them when they were filled with patients: no, he didn’t like sick people cluttering up the place and fouling the air with their germs, but at night (he had to pass through the waiting room to get to the surgery with its treasure-trove cabinet of opiates and anodynes - sometimes just a whiff of pure oxygen was enough to satisfy his needs) their absence seemed to emphasize not only the emptiness of the rooms themselves, but also the vacuity of his own existence, for their presence upheld his eminence among them, their need for his skills and knowledge sustained his prestige. Their illnesses gave him some substance.

  He would have to go down though; besides, he could always make it worthwhile by raiding the ‘treasure-trove’ for something a bit stronger than the half-sleeping pill, something that might not make him sleep, but at least would help him enjoy the insomnia. He moved unsteadily to the door of his private quarters with a little more cheer than he’d felt a minute ago.

  The landing was in darkness and he brushed his hand against the wall to find the light-switch. There, that was better. See what a good doctor he was? Dark one moment, light the next. A genius, no less, a god of causation. Now let’s get to that damned radio and do the business there. Sound one moment, silence the next. Hah, the master practitioner (literally) at work!

  He swayed as he reached out for the newel post at the top of the stairs. Oh my goodness, not enough food and too much Grouse. And wouldn’t you know it? - the sleeping pill was finally beginning to take effect. No matter. Something extra would do no harm. He was the doctor, after all, and doctor knew best. He’d prescribe just enough to lift himself out of this pissing, depressing melancholy. No more, no less, just enough. Right, here we go.

  He took the first step and slipped so that he had to cling to the banisters, his thin legs stretched over the lower stairs. He cursed himself for not having realized he’d drunk so much.

  Well, it wouldn’t be the first time, nor the last. He found purchase with his heels and let them take the strain. He hauled himself up and rested against the rail, giving himself the chance to regain his breath and settle his nerves. Could have been a nasty accident. How the word would have spread around the village - old Dr Stapley found in the morning by his nurse-cum-receptionist lying in a drunken heap at the foot of the stairs. Oh yes, a nice little story to go round and one that would have caused much merriment and shaking of more-pious-than-thou heads no doubt. How his reputation would have suffered. But what did he bloody care? To hell with the lot of them, hopeless bunch of parochial gossips! They had no idea what the real world was about, generation after generation of them stuck here in this pretty-pretty village with its thatched roofs and quaint ways. At least he had tasted other things; he had taken pleasures they could never dream of.

  Bloody noise!

  It was louder, seeming to surge up the stairs as if to taunt him. Voices, moanings, whispers - what kind of radio programme was it, for God’s sake? He straightened, furious at the impertinence of whoever had left the machine in his waiting room. How dare they! Tomorrow he would instruct Mrs Pikings to ban any such monstrosities from the premises. Let them read the magazines he provided at his own cost.

  ‘Damnation, I can’t stand this noise anymore!’

  The doctor stomped down the stairs, growing angrier by the step. It sounded as if the volume had increased of its own accord! Unless, of course, it was because he was drawing closer to the source. Or someone was inside the waiting room manipulating the volume control.

  He hesitated on the last step and stared at the door directly opposite. He was relieved to find it closed, but only for a moment. The question was, was it locked? He almost turned about and went back to the safety of his own rooms from where he could dial the police. But then how foolish he would look if they arrived to find nothing but a transistor radio inside there and the village doctor bleary-eyed and reeking of scotch? What then?

  These wretched sounds were getting inside his head! He clenched his teeth together, deep lines creasing his thin face from his eyes to his jaw. His eyes almost closed and the knuckles on one hand were white as he clenched the keys. The noise was becoming unbearable. It sounded like a madhouse in there! It was too much, too bloody much!

  He took the few feet to the door in quick steps and gripped the handle with his free hand, fury overcoming any reservations he might have had. He gave the doorhandle a sharp twist and pushed. It was locked! Thank God. No one could be inside, this was the only way in. It really was a radio in there.

  So harsh was the noise, so disorientating had it become, that the key scraped past the lock twice before he managed to insert it. He was shouting against the voices as he turned the key and twisted the handle. Confused, maddened, he thrust open the door and reached inside for the light-switch.

  The noise stopped immediately.

  He stood just inside the doorway in complete - deafening - silence. There was no radio and there were no people.
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  But there was an odious, clinging kind of smell, one that he knew quite well. For it was the smell of dead bodies.

  The secretions in Nellie Gunstone’s enlarged lungs precluded a decent night’s sleep not only for her, but also for her husband Sam. At their worst her breaths came in laboured wheezes; at their best they were merely laboured. Furthermore, several times during the night she had to lean over the edge of the bed and hawk up the mucus that had collected inside her chest into the bowl on the floor; she hated the indignity of that as much as she hated disturbing Sam. He needed his rest, for the proper running of their farm, small though it was, required early rising and working through the day, with less than an hour around midday for a snack, until late evening. He was a tough old bird, for sure, but without a good night’s rest - especially now she was unable to help even with the minor chores - he would soon be too exhausted to carry on. Not that he’d complain, mind, he wasn’t that sort, but she knew what was best for him - and why wouldn’t she after thirty-one years of marriage. So she’d insisted he move into the spare bedroom and although he’d grumbled and resisted at first, and only after she’d complained it was his snoring that kept her awake, he’d given in. Nellie still didn’t know if Sam had really fallen for her ploy - she suspected he didn’t want to upset her in her poor state of health by arguing. Now, for the first time since they’d been married (except for five years ago when Sam was in hospital having a gallstone removed) Nellie slept alone. And she didn’t like it, she didn’t like it one bit. Illness, she had found, was a lonely occupation, and in the middle of the night or the early hours of the morning, that loneliness was worse than anything she had ever known.

  She stirred, then woke, automatically shuffling her body over to the edge of the bed and flexing the muscles of her throat to bring up the phlegm that interfered with her breathing so. But as she raised herself on one elbow Nellie realized her air passages were not clogged and that her breathing was easier than it had been for several days. She slumped back onto her pillow, her grey, brittle hair framing her once full but now haggard face, and wondered what had caused her to wake.