Secrets of the Dead

  ‘Hello?’ repeated the voice in his ear. ‘Mr Tolworth?’

  ‘Don’t …’ John took a deep breath; he found it hard to construct even the simplest of sentences. ‘Don’t call me Mr Tolworth. There’s no need … I’m John … so, call me John. OK?’

  ‘OK, John.’

  John could hear the tension in Ben’s voice. The nineteen year old must have been absolutely terrified as he waited for an answer to the question he’d asked just twenty minutes ago. ‘Ben?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘You’re more than welcome to stay with us. Give me the name of the hospital. I’ll come and pick you up.’

  ‘There’s no need for that Mr Tolworth – sorry … John.’ The voice speeded up, and it developed a wobbly quiver due to sheer relief and happiness. ‘Some friends of mine from university are going down to Devon for the surfing. A place called Woolacombe?’

  ‘Woolacombe, yes, I know it.’

  ‘They’ll drop me off at your house. Is this evening OK?’

  John’s first meeting with his son wasn’t what he expected. A van, with surfboards strapped to the roof, pulled up at the house. There were no side windows in the van, so the first glimpse that John had of his son was when a head covered with curly hair appeared out of the back of the van as the door swung open: the stranger vomited copiously on to John’s feet.

  ‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry.’ The youth retched again. More vomit spurted from the mouth with the force of a hosepipe. Wet splashing sounds accompanied hot liquid drenching John’s feet. ‘God, I’m sorry. I … ugh.’

  The driver, a man of around twenty or so, quickly climbed out of the van. More young men emerged from the passenger door and the back of the vehicle. John grimaced. As well as the unpleasant stench of hot puke, there was a powerful smell of booze. Clearly, his son had spent the journey drinking until he made himself sick.

  Ingrid, Vicki and Oliver had put on clean clothes and had stepped towards the van in order to greet the mysterious Ben Darrington. Vicki and Oliver, of course, had been told that Ben Darrington was coming to stay – and that he was their father’s son. That had been difficult news for them to digest. Now Vicki and Oliver had been splashed by what the young man’s stomach had so vigorously rejected.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Ben muttered as he wiped his mouth. ‘I shouldn’t have had so much.’

  ‘Don’t worry.’ Ingrid smiled at him. ‘That’s not a problem. What is important is that you’re here. We’ve been looking forward to seeing you, haven’t we, John?’

  ‘Yes … of course.’

  Ben’s student friends grabbed his arms and hauled him out of the back of the van. Ben’s leg was encased in a yellow fracture cast that extended from his ankle to his hip.

  ‘We’ll help him inside,’ one of them said. ‘Then we’ll get out of your way.’

  Ingrid whispered to Vicki, ‘Towels and a bowl, please. The bowl from the sink.’

  ‘I’m really sorry about the mess.’ Ben made it through the front door before heaving again and dousing the rug.

  The man’s arrival confused Oliver Tolworth. The eleven year old knew that Ben Darrington was his father’s son, making Ben Oliver’s half-brother. Ben wore a bright yellow cast on his leg. People had written all kinds of stuff there, most of it rude. There was no time to discuss what was happening, though; Ben was spectacularly throwing up over everything.

  There was no angry shouting, everyone was terribly polite. Somehow the people that had brought Ben here in the van with the surfboards got him indoors. The downstairs room at the back of the house that had once been used to house Dad’s new printer had been turned into a bedroom. Ben managed to hobble (with pauses to puke on to the floor) into the room. His mother spread towels on the mattress. Vicki put the plastic sink bowl on the floor beside the bed. After that, Ben flaked out on the bed with his arm over his face.

  ‘I’m sorry … I’ve made a mess.’ That’s pretty much all the drunken man said.

  Vicki whispered to Oliver, ‘We find out we’ve got a half-brother, now we find out he’s also a drunk. He’ll steal all our money to spend on booze.’

  The man on the bed grunted and wiped his face with the pillow. This stranger appalled Oliver. That sense of horror of the drunken man, who’d invaded their home in such a rude way, was mixed up with what happened last night when Oliver went night-walking with Fletcher. He tried to rationalize what had happened when he’d seen the mummified corpse. However, he couldn’t remember properly now, other than that the figure covered in bandages had rushed towards them. Then everything got confused. He couldn’t make sense of it all. Although, it was only a dream, wasn’t it? Oliver couldn’t decide if what had happened last night was real or not. And now this … A man called Ben Darrington had arrived. Oliver’s father was also Ben’s father. That horrified Oliver, too. Why had his world gone so topsy-turvy?

  Oliver heard his dad murmur to his mother, ‘Remember, we can’t be sure that Ben is really my son.’

  ‘Just look at him,’ whispered his mother. ‘Look at all that curly hair and the shape of his face: the resemblance between the pair of you is obvious. There’s a photograph of you from when you were nineteen, and you look exactly alike. You don’t need a DNA test to prove that you’re his father.’

  Now that Ben had emptied his stomach, he was much calmer. He rested his palm on the top of his leg that was encased in the cast and winced.

  The man who’d driven the van entered the room carrying a bulky rucksack. ‘These are Ben’s worldly possessions,’ he said cheerfully.

  Oliver’s dad thanked the man and leaned the rucksack against the wall.

  ‘Mr Tolworth,’ the man said, ‘I’m sorry that Ben’s in this state.’

  ‘I was a student once,’ said Oliver’s dad. ‘Don’t worry.’

  ‘No, no, it’s not Ben’s fault. We didn’t realize that Ben had been given strong painkillers at the hospital. We thought we were helping when we gave him cranberry juice to drink.’ The man gave an embarrassed shrug. ‘We put a lot of vodka in the juice. You know, sort of anaesthetic; the bumps in the roads were sheer bloody torture for him.’

  Oliver’s mother smiled. ‘We understand. You were doing your best to help your friend.’

  ‘Yeah, it wouldn’t have been fun listening to him groaning like a wounded donkey for the whole two hundred miles.’

  ‘Well, Ben’s here now,’ said Oliver’s mother. ‘We’ll take care of him.’

  His mother gave Ben a T-shirt and shorts that belonged to Oliver’s dad. Oliver wondered when his possessions would start being handed over, too.

  ‘Dad … Dad … I’m scared.’

  John Tolworth climbed out of bed the moment he heard his son cry out. Enough moonlight filtered through the blinds that he could clearly saw the open door to the corridor which extended through the centre of the old house. Oliver’s bedroom was in the attic directly above this bedroom.

  ‘Dad … Dad …’ Oliver’s call changed to sobbing; such a broken-hearted sound. John hurried along the corridor to the staircase that led up to the attic room. ‘Dad, I’m scared. I don’t want to see it any more …’

  John ran up the stairs. ‘It’s OK, Ollie, I’m here.’ He opened the door to Oliver’s room. The windows were open. A breeze blew the curtains. The branches of the tree that grew close to the house tapped at a window pane. An urgent noise that sounded like bones tapping against the glass.

  ‘Dad …’

  ‘Oliver, what’s the matter?’

  The boy was so scared that he lay in bed with the sheet over his face.

  ‘Dad, I’m frightened.’

  ‘Don’t worry, I’m here.’ John quickly crossed the room to the bed. The breeze sent the curtains flapping wildly. Branches clattered against the window, and the winds made their own weeping sound as they blew around the roof.

  ‘Dad. I can’t see! Where are you?’

  The small figure lay absolutely still under the sheet, entirely covered by it. The boy must
be so frightened that he daren’t move. John felt a surge of dread, wondering if Oliver had suffered some kind of fit.

  ‘Dad!’

  ‘It’s OK, I’m here.’ He pulled back the sheet. His heart froze when he saw what lay there. The blood roared in his ears, and the gales outside rose to a piercing scream … or had he screamed? He just didn’t know. Because lying there, still and lifeless on his son’s bed, was a mummified corpse wrapped in bandages. Its face was cracked and dried-out from thousands of years in a tomb. The eyes, however … The eyes were plump spheres that were glistening and wet. Those were living eyes; they stared up at John with an expression of absolute horror.

  ‘Dad? What’s happened to me?’

  John’s entire body convulsed. He realized he was sitting up in his own bed. The blood running in his veins felt so cold that he shivered. A sensation like spiders crawling up the bare skin of his neck took hold of him. He ran his fingers over his neck to brush away the insects, but there were no spiders there.

  That was a hell of a dream, he told himself with a shudder. A mummy in Oliver’s bed? That was just horrific. Vivid, too. The image of the corpse lying there on the mattress had burned itself on to his brain. When he lay down and closed his eyes to try and sleep again he was haunted by memories of the skull on the pillow; that and those eyes: the glistening, plump eyes that bulged from their sockets. The eyes were alive. He could imagine himself touching them, and feeling how wet they were, just like living eyes.

  Ingrid turned over in her sleep. There in the darkness, he moved his hand towards her and felt the bandages that wrapped the dead husk lying beside him. Flinching, he caught his breath before forcing himself to place his hand on the hip of the … corpse? No. The fabric pressing against the palm of his hand wasn’t the dusty wrappings of a mummy; what he felt there was Ingrid’s nightdress – her warm and very much alive body was just as it should be. She sighed in her sleep. He sat up in bed again in order to check that Ingrid did, in fact, lie beside him, and that no ghoulish substitution had taken place.

  He experienced a surge of relief when he made out her face in the gloom. Yes, Ingrid, wonderful Ingrid, fast asleep. His imagination had replaced her with a desiccated hag. Good God, that had been a vivid nightmare. Maybe it’s a dad thing, but even though he realized he’d only dreamt that his son had been either transformed into an Egyptian mummy, or been replaced by one, he couldn’t sleep until he’d checked that his family were all OK.

  The clock on the bedside table revealed it was one in the morning. After leaving the bedroom, he closed the door behind him so as not to disturb Ingrid. He switched on the light in the corridor, which gave him enough light to see by without waking everyone else in the house. First, he checked on his daughter, Vicki, in the next room. She lay fast asleep, her phone on the bedside table – her vital link to her social life. Next up, he checked on Oliver in the attic bedroom.

  His imagination wickedly told him that he’d find a mummified body lying there on his son’s bed. Nope … his son lay there. He slept deeply too, the bedding thrown to one side due to the warmth of the summer night. His bedside table had already become cluttered – hand-held games, chewing gum, birds’ skulls, and a papery object that appeared to be the sloughed skin of a snake. John began to feel more relaxed now he’d been able to dispel the unease generated by the nightmare. Yawning, he headed back downstairs to his bedroom. However, at the door, he paused.

  He thought: I’ve still to finish checking my family. That’s when the reality struck him hard that he’d acquired another family member, and a close blood relation at that: a teenage son. Padding down to the ground floor, he opened the door to the back room. Glimmers of light from the kitchen made Ben Darrington’s face shine. He breathed deeply as he slept. John felt strong emotion pierce him. Was this instinctive recognition that the stranger was his child? Or even a sudden burst of love for a son he’d never met until yesterday?

  John had decided that Ben Darrington would merely be a visitor who’d stay with them for a while before going back to university when his leg healed in a few weeks. Now John realized that perhaps he was starting to bond with this young man that resembled him so closely. They had the same unruly hair, which was a mass of recalcitrant curls that could defy any comb known to man. When he looked at Ben’s face it made him recall his own face when he looked in the mirror as a teenager. They were father and son alright.

  John Tolworth found himself staring at the stranger who seemed so uncannily familiar. I don’t know the date of his birthday, he told himself, feeling guilty, though he knew he couldn’t possibly be responsible for this lapse. Ben’s mother had never given him any information about the child. I don’t know what interests Ben. What his hobbies are. What course he’s studying at university. I don’t know if Ben is even likeable. He might be arrogant, irritating, boring, self-obsessed, selfish … I know nothing about him.

  But that wasn’t true, John realized. Even though Ben was asleep, his face suggested that here was someone who was pleasant, even sensitive. What’s more, John knew that Ben must be feeling vulnerable. His mother was emotionally capricious (John knew that from when they were together as girlfriend and boyfriend). Possibly, Carol still took illegal drugs. He also knew that Ben was homeless, as well as being at least temporarily disabled due to the broken leg. John doubted if Ben had much in the way of money. After all, he was a student. John had no concerns about providing accommodation here and food; he could also give him some cash. Should he also contribute to university fees, and living expenses?

  ‘It’s going to be an unusual summer,’ he murmured to himself on leaving the room.

  Just how unusual he didn’t know, but when he glanced through the glass panes in the front door he began to suspect that the summer would become even stranger, perhaps frightening, for standing at the end of the driveway was a figure. The moonlight revealed that the man, who was still as a statue, was none other than Philip Kemmis, John’s childhood friend … who’s not only lost his hand but his sanity, John thought. He realized that thought had elements of brutality as well as flippancy; however, there was a whole lot of truth in there, too.

  John looked out at the haunted face of the man standing there in the lane. The man stared back at John with burning eyes. John suspected that Philip would rush to the door and start pounding insanely on the woodwork, just as he’d done with the car when they first arrived here, scaring the Tolworth family half to death. John noticed that his childhood friend wore a green dressing gown over jeans and a shirt. On his remaining hand, a black leather glove. The stump left by the missing hand was concealed by the dressing gown sleeve.

  At that moment, Philip touched the skin beneath one of his eyes, and then pointed at John. A gesture that clearly meant, I see you. Even more worryingly, it might mean, Watch out. I’m keeping an eye on you. Get ready for what I do next. Abruptly, Philip swept away along the lane. The dressing gown flared out like a cloak, giving the impression that he was a king from a Shakespeare play. A tragic king. A doomed king. And one capable of drawing innocent people into this man’s ongoing tragedy.

  Yes, John understood that this was going to be a strange summer. He began to suspect, even fear, that it would be a troubling one, too.

  The next day John continued work in the castle. He’d been given his own room, where he’d set up his laptop, scanner and 3D printer. John had run tests on the scanner by copying pages from a magazine that he’d torn to pieces. The software enabled him to piece together the fragments on the computer screen in seconds. The software had the sophistication to identify shapes of fragments and match them accurately as if the machine was a jigsaw wizard. Reassembling the ripped-up sheets of papyrus would be much more demanding, though. John anticipated that the next few weeks would involve plenty of intensive work.

  ‘Coffee time, co-worker.’ Samantha Oldfield sashayed into the room, her eyes twinkling in that flirtatious way of hers.

  ‘Sounds good to me.’ He yawned.

&
nbsp; ‘A wild night on the tiles?’

  ‘Nothing as exciting as that. I didn’t sleep well.’

  ‘You probably still need to acclimatize to our Devon air. Soon you’ll be sleeping like a kitten. Here, careful, it’s hot.’ She handed him a cup of coffee.

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘If you can spare five minutes, I’ll introduce you to the rest of the team.’

  ‘I thought I’d met everyone yesterday.’

  She waggled her fingers and made ghostly whoo-whoo sounds. ‘I’ll introduce you to your deceased co-workers.’

  He smiled. ‘You treat the mummies as co-workers?’

  ‘Oh, believe me, John, even in death, they’ll be working to draw the money in. Our Egyptian family will be the star exhibit when the castle opens to the public.’ She beckoned him with that provocative smile. ‘Follow Samantha to her chamber of ghoulish delight.’

  He laughed politely at her play-acting. She left the laboratory and crossed the corridor to a room that bore the sign ‘DANGER! KEEP OUT!’.

  ‘It’s the old sign from the tower,’ she explained. ‘We decided to put it on the door to discourage any unauthorized nosy parkers from meddling with our darling mummies. Even sneezing on their poor, dead flesh would play havoc with our research.’

  Her hand swept downward across a row of switches. Brilliant lights came on, illuminating a line of grisly figures. Four lay on their backs on tables. The fifth sat on an imposing chair with arm rests and a high back, resembling a throne. All of the mummies had been partially unwrapped. A few strips of cloth remained around arms and legs, and criss-crossed a torso here and a face there. Plenty of bare mummy flesh was visible. John knew that in years gone by ‘mummy unwrapping parties’ were extremely popular. Crowds would pay to watch the bandages being teasingly peeled off for that first glimpse of a face that hadn’t been seen for two thousand years or more. It might be said that a mummy unwrapping party was the archaeological equivalent of a striptease.