Essay Club
“TAYLOR.”
The voice was a commanding tenor, nasal, even though it came from the great round rib cage of Sir Alan Vine. The other boys cast sidelong glances at Andrew, as they might at a traffic accident, before they filed out of the Leaf Schools classroom with their hats cocked and their green-and-white Harrow-issue notebooks in hand. Andrew watched them enviously.
“Sit.” Sir Alan held out a hand toward an empty desk.
Andrew squeezed into it. The desks were designed for your average fourteen-year-old. Sir Alan remained standing. He leaned against the podium on the shallow dais from which he taught. He wore a grey suit under his black beak’s robes.
“I don’t know you well, Taylor,” he began. “But I’d like to have a talk.” He crossed to the classroom door and closed it. “Just the two of us, for a moment.”
Andrew gulped. Persephone. Sir Alan had found out about their plans for Saturday, he was sure of it.
The night before, Andrew had received a series of texts:
My mum’s house in Hampstead will be empty this weekend. Care to join me? Discretion, discretion. Sir A need not know. Her name so you don’t cock it up is Fidias. Don’t call her fiddy-ass in your American accent. Fee THEE ES.
He had read the texts voraciously, reading each one as if it were a novel. Begun an obsessive imagining, of seeing Persephone boldly naked, of wrapping up in sheets with her like man and wife, of exercising independence in ways such as: watching a DVD; ordering takeout; not having seventy-nine boys tussling around you, sharing your table, crapping in your toilet, leaving scum on the bathroom floor for you to rub your toes in as you shower. He knew she would be better alone, not furtively ducking in and out of classrooms and dorm rooms but romping around in a whole house. Letting her great eyes blink at him the way they did, letting that strange womanly quality pour over him . . . Anyway. Fuck. Now it was ruined. They were busted.
“Sure, what’s up?” Andrew asked, trying to sound braver than he felt.
Sir Alan winced at the familiarity of his tone, but shrugged it off. “I’m concerned,” he said. “About you.”
“Why?”
“It’s an adjustment coming to a new school, a new country. And you’ve come to it in most unusual circumstances. It’s not every day a Sixth Former dies at Harrow.”
Andrew looked down.
“I knew Theo Ryder,” Sir Alan continued, pensively. “I taught him for his O-Levels. Not the best scholar. But a good temperament. He would have done well. Despite what we project to our students here, being proficient in lessons is not always the greatest indicator of success. Sport is better. Means you’re competitive, you like to win, you can handle being bruised and buffeted. It means you can be a leader. There are others here, and not just the students, who fail that same test.”
Andrew waited. “Is that what you wanted to talk to me about? That I should get more involved in sports?”
Sir Alan’s eyebrows rose. Andrew’s tone was even, but there was something insolent about his question. “Not sport. I want to talk to you about your housemaster. Piers Fawkes.”
Andrew looked up in surprise.
“Mr. Fawkes is a poet.” Sir Alan let that hang there, his pause casting a shadow over the word. “Which is all very well. I was a solicitor before I became a teacher. We each have our crosses to bear.” He grinned a wide, yellow smile. Andrew tried to smile in return but instead found himself noticing the tiny grey hairs growing along the bridge of Sir Alan’s nose, and the thicker ones tufting in his ears. “I am evaluating his performance as a housemaster.”
“Mr. Fawkes’s performance?”
“After Theo’s death, we have to inquire. Too much at stake, with eighty boys in a house. One chief concern, frankly, is his stability. It’s hard, when one of your boys suffers a tragedy like that. I have a daughter. As you know. And the thought of anything happening to her . . . well, it can undo even the strongest. I see that. But . . .” His tone rose higher, as if to disguise the significance of what came next: “I understand there is some business between you two, and . . . something about the Lot ghost. Can you explain that to me?”
Andrew stalled for time. “Business?”
But Sir Alan was too practiced a solicitor to fall for that. He clamped his mouth shut and stared fiercely back at Andrew, waiting for him to answer the original question.
“People in the house told me about the Lot ghost . . . ,” stammered Andrew.
“People?”
“Matron.”
“Go on.”
“So that’s how . . . that’s how I know about it.”
“Everyone knows about it,” persisted Sir Alan. “I want to know what you have to do with it. In particular.”
Andrew felt his face flush. “On my first day,” he said, “Matron gave me a tour of the Lot, and I thought I felt something in the basement.”
“Something like?”
“Just . . . a shiver. Gave me the creeps, that’s all.”
“Did you see a ghost?”
“I was jet-lagged,” Andrew said quickly. “I guess I got kind of scared.”
“How did Fawkes get involved?” he asked.
“I told him. He was concerned.”
“You told him about the ghost?” Sir Alan grew animated. “Did he believe you?”
“Sir?”
“You said he was concerned. Is that why? Because he believed you had seen a ghost?”
“He thought I was stressed from . . . you know . . . from Theo dying.” Andrew added: “He was concerned about me.”
“He thought you saw the ghost . . . because you were stressed from Theo dying.”
“That’s correct, sir.” It was a darned good version of things. Andrew was proud of himself for packaging it up this way.
“But the first day,” Sir Alan continued, “Theo was not dead yet.”
Andrew opened his mouth.
“So you did not see the ghost due to stress.”
Andrew hesitated. “Well, I told Mr. Fawkes later. After Theo died.”
“You had continued to see a ghost all that time, then?”
“No,” Andrew mumbled. “Just . . . you know.”
“No, I don’t know.”
Andrew said nothing. Sir Alan chose a new approach.
“Explain to me how you both came to smash the walls of the basement in the Lot. Before you answer, you should know I have accounts from six different boys in the Lot that you and Fawkes were chasing a ghost.”
“Chasing a ghost? What does that mean?”
“You tell me.”
“You said it.”
Sir Alan smelled blood now and did not back down. “The two of you ordered workmen to smash down a wall. Why?”
“I had heard there were some old underground rooms in the Lot.”
“You had? And then you told Fawkes?”
Andrew desperately tried to think of all the angles—why he should or shouldn’t answer this. But there wasn’t time. “Yes,” he said, his face growing hotter.
“And this wall smashing was linked to the ghost.”
“No.”
“You heard there were old rooms in the Lot. Heard from whom?”
“M-Matron,” Andrew invented.
“Do you think if I asked Matron to confirm what you’ve just said, she would do so?”
Andrew swallowed. “I don’t know.”
Sir Alan fell silent. “You’re lying, Taylor,” he said after a moment. “My daughter tells me you have a dodgy reputation in the school already, and now I see your character for myself.”
Andrew’s world was rocked. Persephone had told her father, about him? Told him bad things?
“You’re a practiced liar, the worst to catch out. Not because the facts are so very hard to track down, but because of your demeanor. You more than half believe what you say, because you feel you need to to survive. And you’ll cling to the lies until the last moment. I’ve seen it many times. A sign of a character that’s already compromised. I’ve heard about you. About the drugs.” He paused. “Seen the record. You know we have a zero tolerance policy. You know that if you were to touch drugs here, you would go straight home.” Sir Alan leaned over Andrew now, his face close enough for Andrew to smell his coffee breath. “It’s unfortunate that you feel you need to lie to me. But that’s how it is sometimes. Boys don’t respect a master’s authority. After all, we’re just the staff to them. One might, as a master, feel inclined to phone home, to parents, to procure the extra backing required. But even that is a slippery slope. Boys can be so spoiled, you see, the parents so deluded as to their character, that the power balance can go the other way. Then it’s two against one.”
Andrew had a hard time imagining his father taking sides against Sir Alan; Sir Alan seemed like his father’s kind of guy.
“I’ve made that mistake, and I won’t again,” Sir Alan was saying. “I prefer a different approach. Serve a letter of warning first. That the boy in question is a proven liar, and as such, that boy faces expulsion from the school. Then wait for the parents to become engaged. A blot on their dear boy’s record! Oh, they get to the heart of the matter very quickly, and I either have a problem student to worry about, or I don’t.” Sir Alan sneered at Andrew triumphantly. “I will send that letter to your parents, Andrew. I will have you thrown out of this school.”
“For what?” Andrew replied, frustration and anger growing.
“For lying,” he thundered. “For destroying school property. For ruining morale. For frightening the youngest boys. This isn’t America, where students sue their schools. I have maximum discretion.”
Andrew saw himself getting off the plane at JFK.
You make this good or we’re through with you
“But it needn’t come to that, Andrew,” sighed Sir Alan. He moved to Andrew’s side and squeezed his thick frame into one of the little desks next to him. “It needn’t. I become passionate defending my school because I feel a need to preserve it, improve it. We need the best people possible taking care of the boys. Fawkes,” he added, “is just wrong for the role. That’s all. I don’t want to ruin his career. He’s already more successful than I’ll ever be, as a poet,” he said, sounding disingenuous. “But a housemaster? I think not.” Sir Alan put a hand on Andrew’s arm. Andrew stared at it. “All you have to do”—squeeze, squeeze; Sir Alan had a mighty grip—“is tell me the accurate truth of what happened in the Lot with the ghost.” Three more squeezes. Then he leaned over and tilted his head so he could look Andrew straight in the eye.
“Is Mr. Fawkes in trouble, sir?”
“Possibly. I must find out the truth.”
“He’s a good housemaster,” said Andrew, not quite believing it. “For people like me, anyway.”
“What kind of people is that?”
“I don’t know. Artistic.”
“Wasn’t Theo Ryder artistic enough, then?” Sir Alan said heavily.
Andrew suddenly had had enough.
“I’ve got to go, sir.” He extricated himself from the desk. “I’ll try and remember more. I really will. What’s the best way to be in touch with you? Just come by Headland? Okay. I’ll be sure to. Thank you, sir.”
Andrew fled the Leaf Schools before Sir Alan could stop him, and trudged up the Hill in a blindness of worry and isolation.
“ARE THE WEALTH-CREATING powers of a truly global economy now proved?” The upper-class English accent, rich and arrogant, plucked the words like the strings of a lugubrious harp. “Or do we merely live in a borderless world that allows contagion of all varieties to spread further, faster? The meltdown of the global banking system. Civil war and cross-border conflict. Pandemics such as AIDS, SARS, bird flu, swine flu. Or the more serious threats to civilization.” The voice paused for effect: “Pop Idol and its many spin-offs.”
An appreciative chuckle passed around the room.
They sat around the oval table. Twelve boys, men, and women. The boys—Sixth Formers—wore their tailcoats; the men and women wore suits. In the center of the table—an old one, its wood softened by decades of use—stood two candelabra. The flames stood tall. The faces around the table glowed a pinkish orange in that light, and their dark clothing seemed to thicken to a chiaroscuro black, as if the group had been gathered, not for a group photo, but for a group etching—and they quivered there together under a sketching hand and the flickering light. Before each member sat a silver goblet that had been filled with Madeira. At the head of the table, a boy with long limbs and fingers and deliberate movements that gave him the air of being a giant praying mantis with a forelock, read from a typed essay, flipping pages as he went.
Andrew found the candles mesmerizing. It was the same room he and Persephone had wandered into several nights before. But the room had been transformed, filled now with purpose, as if these figures sitting here were part of a brotherhood, a cabal, lined up against the darkness that lay below them in the wild green of Harrow Park, and they were the tenders of the light. A Madeira bottle, crusty and green, had been set on a silver tray to the side. Even the quotation on the board had changed:
NOCTES ATQUE DIES PATET ATRI IANUA DITIS
Essay Club is by invitation only, Fawkes had explained, as they had walked together from the Lot, Fawkes in a suit, Andrew in his tailcoat; for the more serious scholars. Members write essays, one hour in length, thoroughly researched. Judy’s the faculty advisor, Fawkes added. She told me to invite you. You must have impressed her when you came to see her at the library. Andrew recognized the students from his classes: Scroop Wallace from Ancient History (with spiky hair and an eccentric’s hunch); Domenick Beekin from English (skinny-necked and tiny-headed, a human heron); Nick Antoniades, also from English (swarthy, compact, and confident); and Rupert Askew, the boy currently reading his essay in a plummy accent.
The adults included Sir Alan Vine, leaning his elbows on the table with his bald head held low, with his spectacles and his flared nostrils, like a lineman preparing to charge. Piers Fawkes sat two spots from Andrew. He had seemed jumpy on the walk over; his face was pale, his upper lip damp. He had waved off the Madeira when they first sat down, but doing so seemed to have deprived Fawkes of the benefit of the force of gravity. He clutched the table as if he might be sucked unexpectedly into the sky; he kept noisily unwrapping butterscotch candies and rolling them against his teeth. Sir Alan stared at him ferociously for this. Do you mind, Piers? he had snapped, at last. Mr. Toombs, the Classics beak—thin, kindly, nervous, sibilant—in whose schoolroom they all were, sat smiling, listening to Rupert Askew talk about mutating avian flu viruses. And next to the speaker sat Dr. Kahn. With Mr. Toombs, she was the host of Essay Club. She too had been attentive to Askew for a time. But now Andrew noticed her staring at him, peering as if she saw something she did not like.
MR. TOOMBS PULLED the heavy door closed and turned the key, chattering amiably. Electrifying essay tonight, don’t you think, Piers? All those horrible symptoms. And the section on the Plague—something for you, Judy. Bit of history. Mr. Toombs kept up his patter until he realized the three of them were hanging back and waiting for him to leave; so he said his goodbyes and they stood facing each other in the gloom as he walked away. Mr. Toombs’s classroom sat at the bottom of a long stair to the High Street, its back to the silent, wooded park.
“What did you think, Andrew?” Dr. Kahn asked him.
“I loved it,” he said, with unaccustomed enthusiasm.
“Did you?” She smiled. “Good. I love it too.”
“I think we should start serving Sprite at Essay Club,” grumbled Fawkes, looking drained.
“It would corrode the goblets,” she answered coolly. “Follow me, please.”
She led them into the shadow between the chapel’s grey flanks and the Classics Schools. “No one will overhear us here,” she said, her voice lowered. “There’s something I wanted to say to you both.”
They waited.
“I believe you,” she announced.
“About what?” Andrew said.
“Fawkes has been telling me about your ghost. About how you think it’s Byron’s friend John Harness. I have been curious, of course. But neither convinced nor unconvinced. Then two things happened. First, I had an odd experience in my own home. I thought I felt someone. A threatening someone. Not an actual person, mind you, but a presence. The feeling came just at the moment Piers asked me to help investigate the underground room in the Lot. Curious timing, don’t you think? It was almost as if this . . . someone . . . knew you were asking me to help research John Harness, and then came after me. Made a show of strength. I call that intimidation,” she said. “And then the second was tonight, at Essay Club.”
“I didn’t notice anything,” said Andrew, puzzled.
“But I did. You,” she said. “You are the very portrait of Byron.”
“You’re the last to notice,” said Fawkes.
“Sitting there, in the candlelight. In your tailcoat. We could have been transported in time. And it dawned on me. This may be precisely what is happening to your spirit. He sees you. Then thinks he’s somewhere else. Or some-when else, if you like—with Byron. It all points to John Harness as your ghost.”
“You’ve had the epiphany,” said Fawkes.
“I have. But I don’t like it. The presence I felt was menacing.”
Andrew felt a rush of hope. “Then maybe you can help me,” he said. He turned to Fawkes. “Remember that . . . vision . . . that I told you about? Where I’m in a dormitory, like the Lot, but with sconces, and carpets, and I’m chasing this figure?”
“Yes, of course.”
“When I first had it, it felt like something terrible was going to happen. But I had the dream again. Two days ago, after we found the cistern. And something terrible did happen, in the dream. I saw a murder.”
“Then, or now?” demanded Fawkes, anxiously.
“Then,” Andrew reassured him. “Except. Um. I was the one committing the murder. I suffocated someone.”
“You suffocated someone?” said Dr. Kahn, surprised.
“Harness did. I saw it from his point of view, if that makes sense. Like he was . . . showing me his home movies. I kind of wish we hadn’t opened up that room,” Andrew said to Fawkes. “It’s like we encouraged him.”
“He’s trying to tell you something,” mused Kahn.
“What?”
Fawkes crossed his arms. “If he’s showing you a murder . . . that’s a fairly clear message. He committed a murder. Guilty conscience.”
“I suspect it’s rather more than that. Our ghost may be dangerous in the present.” said Dr. Kahn.
“May be? Didn’t Andrew tell you? He saw the ghost smothering Theo Ryder on Church Hill.”
Dr. Kahn looked at Andrew intently. “No. I missed that part somehow.” She frowned. “And here is Andrew, all costumed as Lord Byron, dangling as bait, for a murderer? It’s time to get Andrew out of danger, taken out of school, perhaps. Call his parents.”
“That would be the same as getting me thrown out,” Andrew objected.
“Good. I’d rather see you sent down than strangled.”
“If we’re wrong,” Fawkes said, “we would have ruined Andrew’s school career for nothing. For a will-o’-the-wisp.”
“Then why don’t you suggest something,” she said sharply.
“It’s a ghost. How do you get rid of a ghost?”
“Hold an exorcism,” offered Andrew.
“What is it they do, with the mediums?” Dr. Kahn jumped in. “You know, holding hands around the table with the velvet tablecloth and the candles?”
“Séance?” Andrew said.
“Precisely.” Dr. Kahn nodded. “Summon the spirit, and talk with him. Ask him what he wants.”
“That’s obvious,” said Fawkes. “He wants Andrew.”
“Then what about the murder?” Andrew countered.
“There’s no record of John Harness committing murder,” Fawkes said.
“But I know he did.”
“All right. Why don’t we find out for certain?” Fawkes suggested.
“You mean do more research on Harness,” clarified Dr. Kahn.
“Everything’s research to you,” groused Fawkes. “No, I mean a bloody tribunal. Look, what is a ghost? A dead person that’s still meddling with the living. Why? They can’t let something go. In John Harness’s case, there was a murder. He can’t get over it, he can’t get over Byron. So, we find out everything there is to know about the murder, and about Harness’s relationship with Byron.”
“I still call that research,” she quipped.
“Then we have a séance. We summon Harness, and we shove it in his face. We say, we know who you killed, and why; but it’s over. The ghost realizes he’s hanging around the wrong century, and off he goes into the light. End of story.”
“Find out who Harness killed, and why,” said Dr. Kahn. “Not bad, Piers.”
He made a mocking curtsey. “May I have a cigarette now?” He fired up his lighter vengefully; his edge had increased since forgoing the Madeira.
“An especially good plan, since we have a resident Byron expert.”
“Who?”
“Who? You.”
“Oh no. I’m being monitored,” Fawkes said quickly. “I nearly got sacked over knocking down the walls in the basement. I can’t go about with an ectometer, scanning for murder scenes and Lord Byron’s lost socks. I won’t last a day.”
“I can research it for Essay Club,” proposed Andrew.
They both turned to him.
“That’s clever,” said Dr. Kahn. “You can disguise the fact that we’re researching the ghost by calling it an essay; or even background for your role in the play. You’re at the center of this, Andrew. You’re the closest to it. It’s right for you to lead the charge. I will assist you. When you feel you’ve gathered enough information, we’ll hold the séance. Or better yet—we’ll hold Essay Club. We have the candles, the dark room, and the circle of people already.”
“Do we have to hold hands?” sneered Fawkes.
“We’ll confront the ghost with who he is, and what he’s done,” said Dr. Kahn. “And then we’ll send him on his way.”
“An airtight plan,” said Fawkes.
“Is it?” she said, still thinking. “I just wonder if we’ll be fast enough. It seems like the ghost is becoming stronger. What was the word you used, Andrew?”
“Encouraged.”
Fawkes added: “Maybe he senses he has our attention.”
“Getting the attention of a murderer. Not advisable,” said Dr. Kahn. She pondered a moment, then perked up. “We can do both. The séance and the exorcism. How does one perform an exorcism?”
“I rather think you need a priest,” Fawkes replied.
“Go to Father Peter, then.”
“Me? I just said I was on probation for corrupting the young.”
“Well, Andrew and I can’t invite a priest into the Lot for a bloody exorcism.”
“Whereas housemasters do it all the time.”
“If anyone can, you can.”
“We’re talking about getting sacked on the spot!”
“We’re talking about Andrew’s safety.”
Fawkes churned. He needed more information about Harness to make his play publishable. If a priest were able to put a stop to the ghostly activity immediately. . . then he would be left with no evidence, no story. He was about to object again. Then he caught Andrew’s grey eyes on him again, waiting for an answer.
“All right,” Fawkes said, petulantly. He hungrily sucked on his cigarette. “I picked the wrong week to stop drinking.”
“What are you three doing in the dark?” A voice lashed at them like a whip. “Conspiring?”
They stood squinting in the gloom between the chapel and Classics Schools. Below them, on the gravel where they had emerged from Essay Club, stood a figure in silhouette.
“Is that Sir Alan?” Dr. Kahn called, tugging Fawkes’s sleeve.
“It is indeed. Who’s there, smoking? Ah, it’s you, Piers Fawkes, in the flesh. I was going to hand out a skew, Piers. I think I might after all.” He snickered. “Are we still on for tomorrow morning? Nine sharp? Not too early for you?”
“I’m up at five every day, writing,” puffed Fawkes.
“Are you? How virtuous. Inspired by Dionysus?”
“Apollo,” Fawkes returned.
Sir Alan charged into their midst, rather too close in the dark, trying to peer into their faces. He turned his sharp nose and glasses reflecting the faraway light, on Dr. Kahn. “What did you think of the essay, Judy? Up to snuff?”
“A bit vague in its thesis, I suppose, but overall well done,” she said.
“They used to be an hour,” Sir Alan snorted. His accent rendered it an ahhh. “Askew eked out thirty-five minutes. Thirty-five minutes! I timed it on my watch. Maybe nineteen sides? Twenty? Hmph. So much for the giants of old.” He turned to Fawkes and did not conceal a sniff in his direction. “You didn’t drink tonight, Fawkes,” he observed. “Gone cold turkey?”
“I have, as a matter of fact,” Fawkes muttered in reply.
Sir Alan’s eyebrows rose in surprise. “We’ll make a man of you yet.” He then turned his attention to the American. “So you’re in Essay Club now, eh?”
“Yes,” Andrew said coldly.
“Your doing?” Sir Alan demanded of Dr. Kahn. She nodded. He looked Andrew up and down disapprovingly. “Think you’ll manage to write anything, Mr. Taylor?”
“We were just discussing that,” said Dr. Kahn.
“Really? Topic?”
“Still developing,” she said hastily, before Andrew could open his mouth.
“Then I’ll wait with the other commoners, shall I? All right then, I’ll leave you to your topic development. Don’t know why you’re doing it here. If you haven’t noticed, it’s nighttime,” he said, pointing at the sky. “I think I’ll go home and have a whisky. How about that, Piers?” He grinned. “Nine sharp?”
“Nine sharp,” Fawkes repeated.
Sir Alan bustled up the remaining stairs, robes billowing, and disappeared around the corner.
“Do you think he was listening?” Dr. Kahn asked.
“I meant to tell you,” hissed Andrew. “He kept me after class yesterday and started grilling me about you, Piers. He threatened to call my parents if I didn’t rat you out.”
“What did you say?” asked Fawkes in alarm.
“Nothing.”
“Nothing?”
“I walked out on him.”
Fawkes laughed, delighted. “Did you really? Good man!”
“I’m no sellout,” said Andrew with a grin.
Fawkes felt his stomach sink. Selling out. That’s exactly what you’re doing to the boy. Making him “bait,” to use Judy’s word. He stared into that handsome face, glowing in the dark, the grey eyes glinting; the expression cockeyed; the smile only half there; the other half held back, protectively, in that fragile, adolescent way. He had seen Andrew Taylor smile maybe a half-dozen times, in all their meetings and rehearsals; and here was one, bestowed on him, and not just a smile, but a kind of supplication. We’re friends, aren’t we? You approve of me, don’t you? That puppy-dog neediness. The orphan’s longing. And you’re using him, he scolded himself. God, you’re a shit, Fawkes.
WHEN THEY REACHED the Lot, Andrew said goodbye to Fawkes and waited for him to enter his apartment.
I still call that research.
When you feel you’ve gathered enough evidence, we’ll hold the séance.
He stood in the drive, thinking.
The handkerchief.
The handkerchief had been a piece of solid evidence. Maybe even a clue. And he’d left it down in the cistern room, mainly out of the shock of seeing it. What had happened to it? Had Reg thrown it away? Or could it have been brushed into the hole?
Minutes later Andrew was in his room, pulling on khakis and a pair of sneakers.
“Roddy,” he called through the wall. “Hey, Roddy!”
A moment later, roused, his stocky neighbor poked his head in. Roddy wore a bulky black terry cloth robe and flip-flops.
“Hey yourself. Some of us are doing work here, you know. Some of us have A-Levels.”
“Oh, bullshit. I’ll bet you five quid you were eating toast and reading comics.”
Roddy guffawed. “All right, you got me there. But I was eating biscuits. I’ll give you two-fifty.”
“Can I borrow your flashlight?”
“What? Why?” said Roddy.
“I want to see what’s down there.”
“Where?”
“In that cistern, in the basement.”
“That cistern you found, with our inebriated housemaster? No thank you. My dad found one of those, in a row house he renovated in London. He said it was an accident waiting to happen. A complete liability. He had the whole thing filled with cement.”
“Well,” Andrew said, tying his sneaker. “You can come and protect me if you want.”
THEY CLATTERED DOWN the stairs, Roddy still in his robe (but with a pair of sweatpants added), Andrew leading the way with Roddy’s flashlight (just one sample of the varied equipment Roddy kept in his cupboard—extra toilet paper, bread knife, heating coils, salt and pepper, first aid kit, and, acquired from some London military paraphernalia shop, a gas mask). Andrew clicked the overhead lights on when they reached the basement. Roddy hastily turned them off again.
“Matron will be on us in no time,” he hissed. “She can see the stairwells from her apartment. Let’s hope you haven’t woken her.”
Andrew checked his watch. It was just after ten.
They approached the still-unpatched hole in semidarkness, their way illuminated only by the glowing red EXIT sign. The yellow caution tape left by the workers sagged.
“You’re not going down there,” Roddy said in disbelief.
Andrew checked to make sure the ladder was still there, and hesitated. “I saw the ghost here. I felt it here. From the very beginning.”
Roddy gaped. “You mean that’s true? You believe all that? About the Lot ghost?”
Andrew stared back at him.
“My God, you are mad. And here I’ve been defending you! Telling everyone you’re misunderstood.”
“I think it wants me to find something.”
“It? You mean the ghost? You’re communicating with it now, are you?”
“Stay here, then. I don’t give a shit. I’m going down there anyway.”
Roddy grew nervous. He had few opportunities for fellowship and adventure, and seemed loath to miss out on this one.
“Now hold on. You’ve got my flashlight.” He retied the belt of his robe. “All right. I’ll come. But only because you need someone sensible with you. If they fished you out of there dead, what would I tell Matron?”
ANDREW DESCENDED WHILE Roddy held the light. With considerable cursing, Roddy followed, then swung the flashlight around them. “God, it is grotesque down here.”
Reg had cleared out the boards and plaster. It had become the cramped cistern room of Andrew’s dream again: a tiny, circular bunker lined with hewn stones and filled with a nose-chilling damp and the drip of trickling water.
Drawn by the same instinct, they both moved toward the cistern mouth. Andrew got on his knees and peered over. He took the flashlight from Roddy and pointed it down. The stone cistern walls were caked brown with decades of cobwebs, fungus, dirt, and rust. They fell some ten feet. The bottom shimmered. A layer of water.
“Gutter water gathers there,” observed Roddy. “Just like the one my dad found. Still has a seal. They don’t do construction like this anymore, I can tell you.”
Andrew leaned over the edge.
“Careful.”
He leaned farther. His waist now balanced on the lip of the cistern.
“For God’s sake!” Roddy put a balancing hand on Andrew’s hamstring. “Do you have a death wish?”
“See that?” Andrew pointed with the flashlight.
“I’m keeping you from falling in; of course I can’t see.”
Andrew scrambled back. He handed the flashlight to Roddy. “Right-hand side.”
Roddy leaned over to take a look.
“Is that a handkerchief?” said Andrew.
“Handkerchief?” scoffed Roddy. “What are you on about? That’s metal.”
Andrew squinted and saw that Roddy was right.
“I’m going to get it,” he said.
AFTER THE EXPECTED bickering and protests, Roddy the mechanic, gear collector, and petty-problem solver became intrigued by the puzzle and began to help. How to get a hundred-sixty-pound guy down a ten-foot hole and back again in one piece, without rousting Matron. They found a nylon rope tied to the ladder (for pulling up tools) and estimated it could hold Andrew’s weight, then discovered that when holding the rope—hands wrapped with his T-shirt against rope burn—Andrew could tie the cord around his waist and under his buttocks in a makeshift saddle and rappel down the cistern without injury. Worst case, you’ll hand the ladder down and I’ll get up that way, Andrew reasoned. So he rolled up his khakis and started down. Roddy, the heavier one, braced himself against the stone cistern lip and lowered the cord for Andrew. With some grunting, Andrew inched his way down.
“How deep is the water?” said Roddy, aiming the light down.
“Should I step in it and see?” Andrew called up.
“Shhh,” said Roddy in a stage whisper. “Don’t shout. Matron.”
“Are you kidding? We’re practically underground. No one can hear us now.”
“Watch for nails. My dad stuck his foot through, once. Spent a night in hospital.”
Andrew gave a sudden squeak.
“What is it?” called Roddy.
“Cold!”
“Go on—squealing like a girl!”
“I’m going to step in.”
A few moments later: “It’s shallow. Less than a foot. Holy shit is that cold.”
“Careful.”
The line stretched. Then: “Got it.”
“Any nails?”
“It’s a tin box. I can’t climb with it. Pull it up first, then I’ll come next.”
RODDY PEERED OVER and aimed the light while Andrew tied the rope around the box. Roddy pulled it up. For a moment, Roddy, at the top, beamed the flashlight on the box as he untied it and examined it. During those two minutes, Andrew stood at the bottom of the cistern, alone, in near total darkness, shirtless and shivering, standing in eight inches of freezing water. His feet went numb and he quietly fought a growing panic. What if Roddy, for whatever reason, left him? Or had an accident up there?
“Roddy?” he called, anxiously.
“It’s an antique. This must have been there for bloody ever. I mean a long time.”
“Roddy.”
“What do you think is in it?”
“Roddy, throw down the rope!”
“All right, all right. There you go again, totally spastic.”
TEN MINUTES LATER, wrists and biceps exhausted, Andrew stood on the stone floor again, puffing and shivering next to Roddy.
“Look at the craftsmanship,” Roddy said, turning over the tin in his hand and admiring it while Andrew held the light. The box curved like a violin. “No rust. Must have been submerged all this time.”
The lid bore a painting of a coach and horses trotting down a country road, with two men in tails and a dog looking on, woods in the background. The sides bore bright stripes—burgundy and gold—and a decorative pattern.
“Anything inside?”
Roddy shook it. “Not gold anyway.” A light bump came from within. Roddy wedged his fingers under the edge. “Hinges still work!” he marveled. “Made in England. That’s what it is. Nowadays it’d be made in bloody China, out of toxic waste. Melt in your hands just before it melted you.” He pulled the lid off and retrieved a narrow bundle.
He put it under the flashlight beam.
“Paper,” he declared.
Andrew wiped the grit from his hands. “Let me see.”
Roddy handed over a small rectangle of a thick-edged paper, tied with ribbon.
“There’s writing on it,” Andrew said. He tilted his head. The writing went in two directions—crossways, and up and down. The lines were bunched closely together. But they made little sense. The handwriting stretched and curled in childish script, and one line did not seem to lead to the next.
“Is this what you were looking for?” asked Roddy.
Andrew stared at the bundle in his hand. Scanned the lines at the top of the page.
When you quit me you think forever but this is not so—I follow you
two cups of blood at least caught in my hand
He tried to make sense of them, and some others, but gave up. He shook his head. “I’m not sure.” He tugged at the corners. The paper had become gluey with age, and the leaves stuck together.
“Don’t rip it, man,” scolded Roddy. “You’ll need an expert to pull those apart. Someone who knows about old documents. Know anyone like that?”