The Man From the Diogenes Club Read online

  He knew who he was. He knew who she was. He knew where this was.

  Though exposed, he was growing stronger again.

  ‘You are an arresting woman,’ he said, startling a smile out of her.

  The sound system burbled ‘Let the Sunshine In’ scrambled with ‘Spanish Flea’.

  At least, she was starting to trust him. Refreshing as it was to be treated bluntly like a mad old relic, the tonic lost its effectiveness after a few doses.

  ‘Flaming Nora!’ screamed Miss Gill.

  The others were out of sight, beyond a turn in the corridor.

  ‘That’s a call to investigate,’ he told Stacy. ‘A good many dramatic situations begin with screaming.’

  ‘That’s from Barbarella,’ she said, making him feel younger. ‘My dad’s favourite film,’ she added, rubbing it in that he was ancient.

  Miss Gill’s scream segued into a nails-down-a-blackboard laugh.

  At a trot, they rounded the corner. The floor was lush as an executive suite, though the nap was moistly squishy, mouldy in patches. The carpet pattern consisted of tiny interlocking H symbols.

  They found the others, gaping up as if at an art exhibit.

  Miss Gill honked astonished laughter. You had to have unearned wealth to get away with a bray like that.

  On a brushed steel plinth was an eight-foot tall marble egg, carved with Humpty Dumpty features.

  It was a monumental bust of Sewell Head.

  II.

  ‘Someone’s got some bloody explaining to do!’ said Miss Gill, through snorts of aghast hilarity. ‘I mean, whose island is this?’

  Head looked up at his own face, curious. Richard could tell the little man wanted to touch the marble but was afraid to. He had chocolate on his fingers and did not want to spoil the surface.

  ‘You’re the pub quiz king, Head,’ said Onions. ‘Any answers?’

  Head said nothing. Onions pointed his doodad at the sculpture and pressed buttons.

  ‘He doesn’t remember,’ said Richard.

  Onions wheeled on him, hostile.

  ‘He doesn’t want to remember. Like you, Jeperson.’

  ‘Back off,’ said Stacy, protective, eye on de Maltby’s gun.

  Onions, surprised, did. He wasn’t handling this well.

  ‘I don’t remember,’ admitted Richard. ‘It’s not a choice. It’s a condition. There is more here than we see. More than you can quantify, Adam.’

  Onions huffed. An old argument was in the offing.

  Stacy had stepped in for him. He squeezed her arm as silent thanks. They had an understanding now.

  With her strength, he wasn’t so feeble.

  Beyond the monumental bust was a sculpture garden, with AstroTurf for grass and subdued lighting. A path wound between a dozen pieces, all representing the same subject – Sewell Head. Some were naturalistic, showing a younger man than the shuffling original, crudely attempting to convey dynamic presence; some were completely stylised, just H-stamped ovals; one was a mobile on which twenty or so transparent crystalline eggs were arranged to represent the atomic structure of an element unknown to science; another was a parody Easter Island head, eggskull elongated and eyes exaggerated.

  ‘I should say somebody has a big head,’ said Miss Gill, more pettish than amused now.

  Sewell Head said nothing. Next to these three-dimensional images of himself, he seemed insubstantial, as if he were the third-generation copy and the artworks the original.

  At the base of a Soviet-style statue of Head heroic in overalls and hard hat was the skeleton of a woman, laid out like a sacrifice. A long white evening dress clung to bones. At first, Richard assumed her head was miraculously intact, then he realised she had worn a wax mask. The doll-face was cracked across, pinned to the skull by a black-handled throwing-knife.

  ‘I’d kill for those shoes,’ said Miss Gill.

  The spike heels were at least six inches. Gold filigree bands wound up almost to the knees; they curled slackly around unclad shinbones.

  ‘Feel free,’ said Head. ‘They’re your size.’

  Miss Gill looked at the little man as if seeing him for the first time. He was past his insubstantial phase. The likenesses reflected back on the original, lending him a charisma that had gone unnoticed.

  Richard knew Onions wasn’t pointing his doodad in the right direction.

  At the end of the path, doors opened.

  Head passed through, followed by Miss Gill and de Maltby.

  There had been an uneasy shift of authority within the group.

  ‘Adam,’ he said. ‘Don’t let this get away from you.’

  Onions had been looking at the dead woman. He reacted to Richard as if slapped.

  ‘I don’t know what you mean, Jeperson. I am in complete control.’

  Could have fooled me, thought Stacy.

  ‘What are you smiling at?’ snapped Onions.

  Richard did not explain. There were so many voices in his head here that it was a delight that at least one was friendly.

  Onions, grumpy, stamped off towards the open doors.

  III.

  The hallway was lined with heads, mounted on shields fixed to the walls. Some were skulls, ancient and cracked. Others were poorly preserved, features dripping like wax. A few were disturbingly lifelike.

  Under each trophy, museum-plates gave details. Richard looked at the prize of the collection.

  Australopithecine, Sterkfontein Caves, c.3m BC, axe-bite.

  It was just a partial cranium, with a jagged gash. Most of the others were of far more recent vintage.

  He considered the next trophy.

  R. J. Tuomey-Rees, MA Cantab, 1953, six-inch nail embedded.

  ‘Six-inch nail embedded,’ said Miss Gill. ‘It bloody is, too. Grue-some!’

  Tuomey-Rees was one of the incompletes, flaps of dried meat over grey bone. A lot of goldwork in his teeth.

  ‘“Could do better if he tried,”’ said Sewell Head.

  The little man looked into the empty eyesockets.

  Everyone stared at Head.

  ‘My Second Year form-master at Coal Hill Secondary Modern was called Tuomey-Rees,’ Head explained.

  ‘He didn’t happen to disappear in 1953, did he?’ asked Stacy.

  ‘Not at all,’ said Head, missing any accusation. ‘He was still flapping about in his blessed mortar-board and gown in ’57, when I left school. Tuomey-Rees was a most humorous fellow. “With your name, young Sewell, you should be, ahem, Head of the Class.” He gave me my nickname. He would say, “Don’t get a swellhead, Sewell Head!” Soon they were all calling me “Swellhead”. Very amusing.’

  It was the longest speech Richard had heard from Head.

  ‘Happy days,’ mused Head. ‘The tuck shop, playground japes, Nurse dosing for nits. And “Whacker” Tuomey-Rees. That was his nickname, “Whacker”.’

  Head made a swishing motion, whipping an imaginary cane.

  ‘The strange thing was that I was an obedient boy, got my homework in on time, never ran in the quad or talked out of turn. But, every few weeks, “Whacker” found reason to chastise me. “Six of the best, Swellhead, six of the best!” Looking back, I think he was one of those sad fellows who got pleasure from caning small boys. It wouldn’t be allowed these days.’

  The nail had been pounded into the skull in the centre of the forehead. Dents around the nailhead showed that a few hammer-blows had missed.

  Richard looked from the Tuomey-Rees trophy to the others.

  ‘Do any other names mean anything to you, Mr Head?’

  Head scuttled down the hallway, examining plates.

  Morris ‘Basher’ Cropshaw, Holly Nook Recreation Grounds, 1954, penknife in occipital hollow.

  ‘There was a boy called Basher Something. Lived three doors down. Always hanging about on the corner when I was coming home from school. Very high-spirited, boisterous, got into scrapes. He took my satchel once and never gave it back. My homework was in it. Whacker striped my bott
om for that.’

  Head came to a trophy with fine red hair done up in a topknot with a big blue bow. The face was shrivelled.

  ‘Here’s another old friend,’ said Head.

  Melanie Potter, Holly Nook Youth Club, 1956, crushed hyoid.

  ‘Pretty girl, but not very friendly. She danced with me once. To win a bet with Mavis Bryant. Oh, how funny!’

  Mavis Bryant, ‘Bryant the Tyrant’, Holly Nook Youth Club, 1956, multiple simple fractures.

  ‘Have you noticed how that happens? You don’t think of someone in nearly fifty years and then when you do their name comes up in some completely unconnected manner.’

  Richard noticed stricken looks among the party. Even Onions was taken aback.

  Sewell Head was getting excited by his nostalgia wallow. He came to a nearly preserved head wearing an army cap.

  Sergeant Arthur Grimshaw, Walmington-on-Sea Barracks, 1960, .303 bullet in cranium.

  ‘When I did my National Service, there was a very loud sergeant called “Grimmy”. Used to get into a lather about close-order drill. Said I had two left feet. Always had me peeling mountains of blessed spuds. You know, I think this really is Grimmy. He’s still frowning, and red in the face.’

  Stacy tugged Richard’s sleeve.

  ‘Richard,’ she whispered, urgently, ‘I went through the files on Head. School, family background, National Service, employment history, the lot. Boring as Bognor on a wet bank holiday. If his past were littered with headless corpses, it’d show up. Surely?’

  After Grimshaw in 1960, the names meant less to Head.

  ‘Professor Etienne Bolin, the particle physicist. I’ve heard of him, but who hasn’t? Ken Dodd, the comedian. I always found him more irritating than funny. Scary clowns were a phobia of mine when I was little. And do you remember that ghastly pop song that was on everywhere you listened for months in 1965? “Tears for Souvenirs”. Put me off Top of the Pops for life.’

  Yoland gave a sympathetic ‘ugh’.

  Richard and Stacy looked at the preserved pop-eyed, crooked-teethed Ken Dodd trophy.

  ‘Now he’s not beheaded,’ said Stacy. ‘He was in that Kenneth Branagh Hamlet film.’

  ‘This does look like him, circa 1965, though. As if he were cut off in his prime.’

  ‘“Tears for Souvenirs”. Can’t say I’ve heard of it.’

  ‘You haven’t missed much.’

  They were nearly at the end of the trophy hall.

  ‘And this fellow means nothing to me,’ announced Head.

  Frederick Regent, the Diogenes Club, 1972, decapitation via monofilament.

  Richard heard the ghost of a scream.

  His hands knotted into fists.

  Time passed inside his mind.

  He forced himself out of fugue, and realised everyone else had heard the scream, which still echoed.

  No, not echoed – continued.

  Another dramatic situation.

  IV.

  ‘It’s in here,’ said Onions, his LED readings flashing angry red.

  The scream careened about the hallway like a pinball. There was an associated visual phenomenon, a ragged freeform shadow that darted in a zigzag. It caught Kydd out in the open and passed through him with a ripping sound. The aircrewman patted his chest.

  ‘That wasn’t half a funny feeling,’ he said. ‘Warm and wet.’

  Richard was pressed against the wall, Stacy by him. He tried to follow the shadow, but it flickered too swiftly.

  ‘Nothing to be afraid of,’ announced Onions. ‘It’s an afterimage. It’s not happening now. It’s long gone. Just a recording on the Stone Tape.’

  The wall was trembling. Richard wondered how dormant that volcano was.

  At the end of the hallway a door flapped open and a figure lurched into view, like a target at an army shooting range. A person of indeterminate sex in a white coat and hard hat, opaque white visor over the face, loose white polythene bootees and mittens tied over the extremities. It held one of the unfinished-looking guns that had been in the hands of the corpses in the cavern.

  The apparition moved at half-speed and was silent.

  Onions pointed his doodad at the white figure. Its edges blurred and Richard saw the knees kink as if the thing were a hologram projected on drifting mist.

  ‘Now, that’s a ghost,’ said Stacy.

  The figure’s movements slowed. It was wheeling about, bringing its gun to bear on the hallway. The outlines were smeared completely now, bleeding into the background. Even the gun was soft, barrel and magazine floppy.

  Stacy made a gunfinger and popped her mouth.

  A red wound flowered on the ghost’s chest, unfolding like one of those pellets that become roses when dropped into water. It was knocked off its feet and floated upwards, legs trailing and dissipating.

  Stacy, astonished, raised her finger and blew on the tip.

  ‘Temperature is down ten degrees centigrade,’ said Onions. ‘It’s sucking heat, converting it to matter.’

  The ghost’s phantom gun kicked. Black blobules coughed from the barrel and lobbed through space. Yoland bent out of their path, knocking Miss Gill down, covering her against the floor.

  Sewell Head, fascinated, turned, watching ghost bullets pass by him. They left visible ripples in the air. Head prodded one of the wakes with a long finger, and twirled it into a nebula-shape.

  Stacy drew both index fingers and popped like Wyatt Earp emptying his six-shooters into Old Man Clanton. The ghost jittered and staggered.

  The blobules still swam through thick air.

  De Maltby fired his real gun. The report was appallingly loud, but the shot did less to the ghost than Stacy’s pretend bullets.

  De Maltby stuck out a hand to steady himself as he took aim again. One of the blobules collided with his palm.

  Everything sped up. The ghoststuff fell like rain, splashing the carpet in a splatter, leaving a Hiroshima blast shadow.

  The single shot still resounded, an assault on the ears.

  Another scream exploded, not ghostly.

  De Maltby’s left hand was a red ruin, fingers stiff and shaking, blood welling from a ragged black hole. He dropped his gun.

  ‘Now that was bloody stupid,’ said Richard.

  The viscount gripped his wrist and fell, swallowing yelps of pain. He thrashed a little and swore a lot. The barracks vocabulary sat ill with his plummy accent. Kydd got to the pilot’s side with a battlefield med-kit. Richard helped Stacy pin de Maltby down as the aircrewman prepared a syringe, drawing from an ampoule of morphine. Stacy skinned de Maltby’s sleeve and held his arm steady so Kydd could get the shot in him.

  Yoland had picked up de Maltby’s dropped gun; he aimed at the doorway. Head still stood out in the open, puzzled. Miss Gill was in a crouch by Yoland, presenting a small target. Onions was flat against a wall, Ken Dodd gurning over his shoulder as he fiddled with his doodad.

  De Maltby stopped kicking and Kydd got a proper tourniquet around his arm. The blobule hadn’t gone through the pilot’s hand, but dissipated on impact, turning to nasty black gunge. Kydd washed out the wound with bottled water and slapped on a pressure bandage.

  ‘…Uhhhm… hurts,’ said de Maltby, redundantly. He shook his head and gritted his teeth.

  The pilot was in no shape to fly them off Skerra. Richard hadn’t qualified on a helicopter in twenty-five years. Unless someone else in the party had hidden talents, they were stuck here until they could be rescued.

  De Maltby relaxed, eyes fluttering shut.

  If the viscount had shifted a bit more to the left, his lesser relations would have bumped up in the line of succession. The Royal Navy would have had to do some embarrassing explaining to the Royal Family.

  Miss Gill got up and angrily aimed a finger at Onions.

  ‘You said it was an after-image! You said it couldn’t harm us!’

  Onions tried to show her a read-out. She wasn’t interested.

  ‘Where are the proper experts who’r
e supposed to protect us?’ she demanded. ‘I was promised a crack team of up-for-anything sailors armed to the teeth and ready to throw up a ring of fire and steel around us. All I’ve got are useless old weirdos and a bloody meter maid. I didn’t come here to be shot at.’

  Stacy, the ‘meter maid’, cocked her gunfinger and pointed it at the back of Miss Gill’s head. Richard gave her the nod and she put it away.

  ‘It’s extremely rare that a manifestation causes injury.’

  ‘Tell him that.’

  De Maltby was smiling now, morphine kicking in.

  Miss Gill and Onions glared at each other.

  ‘Listen to me,’ announced Richard. ‘This is a haunted house. Bigger than most, but still a haunted house. Adam’s little gadgets are all well and good, but what is going on here isn’t just an atmospheric phenomenon, like weather. It’s reactive and it’s directed. A show is being put on for us. But we aren’t just an audience, we’re targets. The place is inhabited, ensouled. Make no mistake, the stone tape isn’t a medium of recording but of transmission. Whatever haunts here will try to affect us, to work on our weaknesses. It’s already begun, subtly and, ah, not to subtly. From now on, be alert, open, on your guard. I needn’t say we shouldn’t go wandering off alone. Always know where everyone else is. Fix on that. It’ll help you when there are others among us. Beware of circles – physical circles, mental circles. The place would like us to go round on its little rails. Haunted houses are traps and tests. The bad ones, that is, and this is certainly one of those. Adam, give a heads-up whenever your needles twitch. It’d help if we knew something was coming before it arrived. We’ve seen what can happen. Let’s not let it happen again.’

  Onions opened his mouth, as if he had a long, prepared answer.

  ‘Let’s move on,’ said Richard, cutting him off.

  Kydd relieved Yoland of de Maltby’s side-arm with, ‘I’d best look after that, sir.’ The aircrewman helped the doped pilot stand, making sure he could walk without falling over himself.

  Before leaving the hallway, Richard looked at the Fred trophy. It was the best-preserved of the modern collection, as if curing methods had improved between 1953 and 1972. It was a real severed head, very deathlike, and was somehow really Fred, hair close-cropped, mouth open. Fred as he had been as a young plod in 1972, not the top cop Richard had seen two days ago at Euston.