The Ghosts of Sleath (2 page)

D
AVID ASH UTTERED
a soft groan as he shifted position. The loose joints of the straight-backed chair creaked and he quickly became still again. He looked at his wristwatch, the luminous dial informing him it was almost ten to three.
A. M.

God, there had to be better ways of making a living, he told himself, carefully flexing his shoulders. Nearly three in the morning and here he was, skulking in the semi-darkness between racks of towels and sheets, trying not to breathe too loudly, desperate for a cigarette … longing for a drink. He eased himself upright, rubbing his hands over his face to clear the tiredness. Even the scraping of his chin stubble sounded too loud at that ungodly hour.

The door of the laundry room was slightly ajar so that the night-lights plugged into the wall sockets of the corridor outside provided a dim glow. He went quietly to the door and peered through the gap. Silence out there, not a soul stirring. The smell of stale food lingered as though it had soaked into the dull wallpaper itself; he wondered if he scratched the wall with a fingernail, would the odours waft out, released as if from a magazine scent card. Ash cleared the idle thoughts and listened again. No, not a sound. The old folk were at peace.

He backed away, turning to the Olympus camera resting on a stack of towelling. He pressed its battery check lever and a
tiny red light glowed like the single eye of a demon. The battery was fine, but hadn’t he tested it only two hours ago? He pressed fingertips against his temples, squeezing gently and willing the dull headache to leave. Was it due to tiredness or boredom? Or was tension the true cause?

Should be used to it. Endless hours of inactivity, waiting in darkness for so long that eventually even the imagination gave up. Gave up the ghost. Literally.

He allowed himself a smile, and if it could have been seen there in the darkness, its irony would have been plain.

Ash reached for the thermos flask by the chair and quietly poured himself a coffee. What the coffee needed was a measure of brandy, but no, he had promised Kate. He was always promising Kate. No booze, not when he was working. It was a rule he did not always keep.

Yes, Kate, I know I’ve got a problem, and yes, Kate, I know it’s getting worse. Ash spoke the words in his mind, imagining her standing there before him in the darkness of the laundry room. But think back, Kate, think back three years. Could she blame him? Could she believe him?

He’d often wondered about that. She had been the only one he’d spoken to of those three nights at Edbrook, the only person who wouldn’t doubt his sanity. Yet he had caught the uncertainty in her eyes - no, it hadn’t been as strong as that; it had been no more than a hint of incredulity. And who could blame her? Even he had doubts when he thought back, even he sometimes wondered if it had not all been a terrible dream, a grotesque nightmare, one that haunted him to this day. His fingers rose to the faint scar on his cheek, a thin ridge of hard flesh that was only visible in a certain light, and he wondered …

No! He almost said the word aloud.

He took a large swallow of stale coffee and sat back down on the chair. Concentrate on now, he advised himself. Think only of the present, forget about things that happened so long ago, things that made no sense. (But they did make sense,
didn’t they, David? Everything that took place in that old house three years ago was perfectly, though peculiarly, logical. That is, if you believed in malign spirits.)

It was as if these words inside his head were spoken by another, and they were insidious, almost sly, a whispering that did not want him to forget; yet the tone was his, they were his own words, repeated often, lest reality and time diminish their significance.

Ash shivered, though it was not cold inside this room with its warm pipes and smell of fresh linen. Maybe he should leave these night-time surveillances to others, those more stable investigators or researchers who viewed these matters less emotively. As he once had. There were enough members of the Institute to cover such work, it hadn’t been necessary to take this one on alone. Yet it had been his idea, it was he who had suggested this solitary vigil to the owners of the Bonadventure Rest Home after a month’s investigation had proved futile. He had discovered no paranormal activity, no haunting - and no Sleep Angel.

The Sleep Angel. Harbinger of death, portent of doom. Or so the home’s old folk would believe.

A figure wearing a flowing gown that somehow glowed green had appeared before three of the oldest residents and informed them it was time for them to die. And they had followed the instructions, two of them a few days later, the third, it seemed, instantly. (One of the other residents, an elderly woman whose capricious bladder gave her cause to leave her room more than once a night, had witnessed the so-called ‘angel’ entering the dead man’s room as she was returning from the bathroom. She, herself, had scurried back to bed and pulled the covers over her head in case the visitor noticed her and decided to pay her a call too.) It was the first two who had recounted the Sleep Angel’s words to them, which they repeated until they, too, obeyed the instruction.

Claire and Trevor Penlock, the owners of the Bonadventure, had endeavoured to minimize the stories and to soothe their
clients’ anxieties, but the residents had little else to do with their time but gossip and exaggerate, and the Penlocks feared that rumours about the home would soon spread. While deaths in such places, given the average age of the usual residents, were commonplace - if not expected - word that unearthly forces were actively encouraging the ‘passing on’ would definitely be harmful to the Bonadventure’s reputation. Reluctantly the Psychical Research Institute had been contacted and arrangements for a discreet but thorough investigation had been made.

Initially Ash had wondered if this seraphic spectre was some kind of contagious hallucination, first imagined by someone close to death (someone whose religious beliefs might well inspire visions of a heavenly guide to the next world), and he had spent time talking to the residents, gently probing but finding little evidence of mass hysteria, or even any great interest in the supernatural. Nor did he notice much senility among them. He also questioned the staff, from the matron, Penlock herself, to the junior care assistants and the cook, giving particular attention to the two senior care supervisors who alternated weekly on overnight duties. He checked that the building itself was secure at night and was satisfied that all windows and doors were either bolted or locked. Each night he installed tripod-mounted cameras with automatic detectors at the end of corridors and the main hallway as well as placing thermometers at certain strategic points to record any dramatic and unaccountable dips in temperature at any time. Outside the bedroom doors of the home’s most elderly residents, or of those whose health was vulnerable, he sprinkled powder so that footsteps, ethereal or physical, might show the following morning. He studied architectural drawings of the building itself, including those detailing recent renovations, and looked into its history, interested to learn of any past paranormal phenomena. All to no avail. No one, apart from the deceased and the old lady, had witnessed the manifestation, nothing was disturbed during the nights of his investigation, and the cameras
only took pictures of the senior care supervisors making their night rounds or certain senior citizens visiting the bathrooms.

Yet Ash was not quite satisfied. Which was why he had suggested these further night-time vigils should be in secret. And on particular nights only.

Twice the matron had smuggled him into the home while the supervisor was busy on her evening rounds administering medicine, but already Ash was beginning to suspect it was all a waste of time.

On this night, however, his patience was to be rewarded.

He heard a noise from somewhere nearby. Silence followed.

He waited a few seconds longer, then slowly eased himself up so that the chair’s joints - or his own - made no sound. He tiptoed to the door and peered through the narrow gap.

Directly opposite was the lift that serviced all three of the home’s floors and to the right of this was a short wheelchair ramp, rather than steps, leading to another corridor where the central staircase was situated. He opened the door wider and stole a look outside: the corridor to his left was empty and all the bedroom doors appeared to be closed. Only the door to the bathroom was open.

He shut the laundry-room door, leaving a slight gap again, then slunk back into the gloom.

Another sound. It could be the building settling. Or it might be someone on the staircase around the corner from the ramp.

Ash moved even further back so that light from outside, dim though it was, would not shine on him. He became conscious of his own breathing.

He also became aware that the orange glow from the corridor’s night-lights was changing subtly; a soft greenness was merging into it.

His breathing stopped as a shape floated by the door.

Jessie Dimple woke suddenly. In her dream her limbs had been lithe, her skin had been smooth, and her heart had been alive with passion. She had been running through a field of buttercups, their brilliant yellow, against a background of vivid green, lifting her spirit so that each step was a graceful leap that became a wonderful arc, and soon she was floating, flying, always returning to the earth, to the flowers, but easily lifting again, up towards the clear sapphire sky, to soar then sink, soar then sink, in rainbow curves that grew longer and longer, higher and higher, until eventually she hardly touched the ground at all, she really was flying, flying towards -

She gave a moan, annoyed at her awakening, sad that she had once again became an aged crone whose bones were too brittle, whose skin was too wrinkled, and whose heart and soul were too wearied with the effort of life.

She lay propped up in bed by an A-pillow, the only way she could sleep these days without choking on her own throat fluids, and tried to remember. Ah, the dream … such a wonderful dream … where gravity and age held no sway and the body played servant to the spirit. The peace the dream had brought. The freedom …

But what had awoken her? It was still dark outside the window.

She stirred in the bed, but her blurry eyes could not see the face of the clock she kept on the bedside cabinet. She sank back and allowed her cloudy gaze to roam around the room, trying to remember if she had taken all her pills and medicines that day, the verapamil for her angina, the Sinemet for the Parkinson’s, the thioridazine for her confusion and the lactulose for her bowels. Yes, yes, the matron or the supervisor would have made sure of that. Indeed they would have teased her for knowing and demanding each prescription as though they were not up to their job. Well, Jessie had been a nurse during both world wars, when she was young … when she was young … so long ago, a lifetime ago … when Howard had been alive and the children … the children had loved her, had
cared for her as she had cared so very much for them. But they had their own lives to live now, they couldn’t be spending all their hard-earned time with an old thing like her who had eighty-two years of life behind her, they couldn’t be visiting every day, every week, every month, when they had their work - their very important work - to see to, their own lovely families to take care of … to cherish … as she cherished … them.

Moisture blurred her eyes now and the dark shape of the crucifix on the wall opposite became even more indistinct. With a quivering hand, Jessie lifted the edge of the top sheet to her eyes and softly wiped away the tears.

There now, you silly old thing. Getting more and more sentimental in your old age. Getting more and more daft. Well, they’ll be here tomorrow, if not, then the next day. They had busy lives. But they cared very much. Places like this were expensive, but they never grumbled. Her boys were good to her. But when had she seen them last? Had it been yesterday? No, no, the day before. Oh, you’re a stupid old biddy. It had been a long while ago, yes, a long while. A month? Longer, Jessie, much longer. They came when they could, though, and the wives and the grandchildren came with them. Not every time, but often. Occasionally. Sometimes. Well, what did young children - teenagers now, weren’t they, or were they even older than that? Hard to remember, hard to picture them - what did they want with horrible places like this? This was for old folk, not the young. The young didn’t like the smells and the sickness and the gibberish and the forgetfulness and the reminder of what one day would be their own lives. And that was hardly surprising. Why, if she had her own way, if she were not so useless and helpless, she would be elsewhere too!

Her dry, lipless mouth tilted to a smile. Elsewhere. Oh Jessie, there was only one other place for you, my girl. That is, if He wanted you. She closed her eyes and prayed that He did, and her thoughts of heaven were not unlike her dream.

She opened her eyes again when she sensed - not heard - the movement of the bedroom door.

The Sleep Angel was standing there in the opening, a green glow shading the whiteness of its flowing gown. Its face was in shadow, but Jessie knew its expression would be kind.

The angel came towards her, gracefully, quietly, and Jessie imagined it was smiling.

It spoke, so softly that Jessie barely heard the words, and it told her it was time to let go, that there was a better place waiting for her, where there was no pain and no sadness, and all she had to do was give up her spirit, discard her life …

And as it leaned towards her as if to kiss her toothless mouth, Jessie wondered if the smile was not a frown, if the frown was not a scowl, if the scowl was not a grimace of loathing. Jessie suddenly felt fear and something stiffened inside her bony chest, became tight yet seemed to expand, causing a pain that was worse than anything she had felt before. The hurt was outrageous, cruel, and had nothing to do with peaceful resignation.

As she clutched at her struggling heart she became aware that light was blazing above her and that another presence was in the room. The Sleep Angel was falling away from her and it was screaming … was screaming … was screaming as she, herself, was screaming …