Somewhere: Chapter 2 (Pt 2)

It was a straightforward story. The Muirs wanted a water feature in their back garden. Phil Muir had done the paving in the front himself, and saw no reason why he shouldn’t do this. He had dug a hole. At first he and his wife thought the whispers they could hear were drifting over from other gardens. Although there were no young children in any of the nearest houses, it might have been visitors, or just voices carrying from the street. But the whispers didn’t stop. They could be heard outside even at night.

“So you hear them all the time?” Ciaran asked.

Mr Muir shook his head. “No. But there doesn’t seem to be any pattern. We can go a whole day and not hear anything, and then the next day Corinne goes to put the washing out and — there you are.”

Mrs Muir said, “It’s like they’re there in the garden with you. As though they’re whispering right into your ear. Once or twice…” She looked at her husband. He nodded briefly. “Once or twice I’ve even thought…you know, just out the corner of my eye…” She looked down at her lap.

“The voices are very soft, then?” Ciaran asked.

Mrs Muir nodded.

“So it’s not likely any of the neighbours have heard them?”

“I don’t think so. No-one’s said anything.”

“And it definitely sounds like children’s voices?”

“Little girls, I’d say.” Her breath snagged. “It’s those kids, isn’t it? The ones from the sixties. It’s them.”

“Not necessarily,” said Ciaran. “I should think there’s been any number of children here over the years. It could be them, but that needn’t mean anything sinister. The living leave their energy signatures too. What we hear or feel, or see sometimes, is the accumulated energy from a whole variety of events and experiences. It’s the strength of all those emotions that counts, and that can be happy or sad.” He looked at her earnestly. “Never underestimate the power of joy.”

Jack shifted slightly.

“How long have you lived here?” Ciaran asked.

“Nearly twenty years.” Mr Muir glanced at his wife for confirmation. She gave him a gentle look full of memories.

“And you’ve never had anything like this before?”

Mrs Muir shook her head. “I’m just glad none of this happened while the kids were at home. Our son, the youngest, he’s gone to live with his girlfriend, so it’s just me and Phil now. We haven’t told any of the family. They’d only worry.”

Mr Muir sighed. “I can’t get my head round all this, to be honest. This Curtain business. Ghosts that aren’t ghosts. And now there’s all this other weird stuff going on.”

“Weird stuff?” said Ciaran.

“Did you see how quiet it was out there?” Mr Muir nodded towards the window. “No-one seems to want to mix with anyone else. People don’t even talk when they pass on the pavement. And if they do it’s generally bad words. The kids don’t play out anymore. I know it used to be quite bad round here, but the troublemakers got moved, people rallied round, it’s been a good community. And now…a couple of blokes came to blows last week because one dog barked at another.”

Mrs Muir’s voice trembled. “Do you think it’s something we’ve done? What we’ve dug up?”

“It was happening long before we dug anything up,” her husband said.

Ciaran’s voice was firm. “Whatever it is, it’s nothing you’ve done. If there are Echoes in your garden, they are just that. Echoes.” He was aware of Jack shifting again. “They can’t turn people against each other, they can’t make anyone do anything. They’re no danger to anyone. They’re just, if I can speak plainly, bloody annoying.”

Mrs Muir said sadly, “We had a street party for the coronation, you know, out there on the grass. Nearly everyone came. Little disco for the kids, everything. But this last year or so, I don’t know what’s happened.”

A silence fell across the neat, beautifully kept room.

“Well,” said Ciaran. “This is what we’ll be using in your back garden.” He slid the receiver from the backpack and raised the lid. “As you can see, it’s just a sort of chunky laptop. We’ve got receiver pads in place of a keyboard, and the keys down the side let us focus on particular parts of the energy pattern. We see the Echoes as wavy lines on the screen. There’s headphones for any auditory manifestations, like the voices, and we can also fit a camera if necessary. Anything the receiver picks up is automatically recorded and stored.” He beamed at the Muirs. “Any questions?”

They both looked a bit uncertain, but shook their heads. Ciaran expanded his beam to include Jack. Watch and learn, newbie. Watch and learn.

It was the first time he’d had to induct someone, and he was rather enjoying it.

Mrs Muir took them through the spotless kitchen to the back door.

“Thanks,” Ciaran said, with another smile. “We would ask you to stay indoors for now. The fewer feet out there, the clearer our readings will be.”

The garden was mostly lawn, with immaculate flower borders on either side and a rockery by the back fence. Ciaran’s family had always had a gardener, so flowers were not his strong point, but he recognised the roses and dahlias. His mother liked dahlias. A crazy paving path followed a carefully laid out curve from one end to the other. The hole for the water feature was beside the rockery.

Ciaran crouched to inspect it. Mr Muir hadn’t got further than a couple of feet. Ciaran looked back at the house, and his eye caught the blur of a head moving away from a bedroom window next door. He would offer the Muirs a selection of the usual excuses to use if their neighbours asked about people poking about. A water main, a gas pipe, even a possible historical find. If the neighbours were the types likely to know about the location of water mains and pipes, the historic find would be the safest bet. Although possibly a signal for the neighbours to start digging up their own lawns in search of a windfall.

He opened the backpack. “Right, let’s get this sorted.” He looked up at Jack. “Are you OK?”

Jack had gone very pale. “Can’t you hear them?”

For a moment Ciaran thought the newbie was taking the piss. Then he looked at the bewildered, almost fearful expression and thought it unlikely Jack was that good an actor. He remembered his own first experience of an Echo. It was one thing reading about them or watching training videos, quite another to hear or feel or see it yourself. Although it was unusual for a newbie to pick up something before an experienced investigator.

“What can you hear?” he asked.

Jack’s voice was hoarse. “Children.”

Ciaran remained crouching, completely still. Then he caught it, a faint sibilance he probably wouldn’t even have noticed if Jack hadn’t said something. He opened the receiver and pressed the On key. Almost immediately, oscillating white lines appeared on the black screen. He studied them. An average energy pattern. Nothing Ciaran hadn’t seen before. He slipped on the headphones, offering the second pair to Jack. The newbie shook his head, looking decidedly queasy.

Ciaran was starting to feel impatient. Had the guy not understood the job? Had he failed to realise that picking up energy residue from the past was the reason for SES’s existence? Granted, hearing ethereal kids’ voices was a bit startling the first time it happened, but he couldn’t say he hadn’t been warned. If he went to pieces every time they got a reading he would be no good whatsoever.

Ciaran knew Elsie would want a report on how the recruit had performed. Ciaran was quite looking forward to delivering it.

He put questions about Jack to the back of his mind and concentrated on his headphones. There seemed to be two voices and they did sound like little girls. According to the records Annis had pulled up, the children who had gone missing in the 1960s were girls, Lesley and Moira. And Mrs Muir was right — there was an edge to the sound, and occasionally a sudden shushing from one to the other, as if they were afraid of being heard. Of course, that could just be kids doing something they shouldn’t. It might be clearer when they listened to it back at the office.

Jack was standing stock still and had tears in his eyes.

“They’re terrified,” he whispered.

Ciaran stood up. “We don’t know that. We can’t make assumptions on the basis of a few whispers. Even if it is them, they’re not actually here, you know. Whatever happened or didn’t happen in this garden, it’s long gone. Either those little girls are elderly ladies now, or they’re long past us helping them.” Perhaps, he admitted to himself, not the most reassuring thing to say. He felt momentarily guilty. It was, after all, Jack’s first visit. He thought of sending the newbie back inside, but on reflection decided he didn’t want him anywhere near the Muirs unsupervised. Not in that state.

He took his final readings. He could still hear the voices floating around them, but they had not got any louder, and as far as he could tell they were on a sort of loop, a short conversation endlessly repeated. Which would indicate a few moments of particularly strong emotion - fear, sadness or joy -  creating an Echo capable of breaking through a thin spot on the Curtain. None of this was unusual, even if the context made it a bit distressing, and none of it could be responsible for the inhabitants of Turnlove Lane getting grouchy with each other.

He switched off the machine. “It seems pretty straightforward. We have Echoes. We’ll schedule some reinforcement work, and possibly the Muirs will have to give up on the water feature, just in case.” He scrutinised Jack. “Are you all right?”

Jack gazed round the garden. “They’ve gone.”

“Yes, well that’s what Mrs Muir said. They come and go. Which is pretty normal, as far as normal goes. Each Echo has its own particular pattern and behaviour, within certain parameters.” Ciaran glanced back towards the house. “When we go back in there I don’t want a word about terrified kids or anything else. These people are anxious enough about it all, without you making them feel worse. Just nod and smile and keep schtum, OK?”

“OK.”

Mrs Muir met them at the back door. “Well?” she asked nervously.

Ciaran smiled. “Nothing to worry about, Mrs Muir. Our readings show there are Echoes in the garden, and both my colleague and I picked up on the voices. The readings are average for this type of situation, nothing unusual about the activity.”

Her husband appeared behind her. “Can you do something about it?”

“Oh yes,” Ciaran said easily. “We’ll come back to reinforce the Curtain, and hopefully that will be the end of it. I’ll check the appointments when I get back, but it should be in about a week. I’ll phone you as soon as I see what’s available. In the meantime, please don’t do any work around the hole. Definitely don’t fill it in because that would disrupt the feedback and interfere with the remedial work.” He assumed a regretful expression. “I think you may have to give up on the water feature. If the Curtain is prone to thinning there, it probably isn’t the best idea to tempt fate.”

“Was it those girls?” Mrs Muir asked.

Ciaran renewed his smile. “Mrs Muir, we have no way of knowing. As I said before, there have probably been lots of children in that garden over the years.” He wondered whether to point out that it could even be her own children, a moment of extreme emotion leaving behind a resonance among the stones of the rockery, but then decided it was probably better not.

“It’s just,” she said, “I don’t want my grandchildren playing out there if…”

“Honestly,” said Ciaran, “once we’ve done the reinforcement, it’s very unlikely there will be any repeat of activity. And remember, the Echoes are just that. Waves of energy. They’re not ghosts and they don’t have any form of consciousness or intent. We did look into the records of that old case before we came, and we know the police checked the garden thoroughly at the time. They found no indication of anything untoward. There’s nothing to be frightened of.”

“And you don’t think it’s anything to do with the other weird stuff around here?” Mr Muir asked.

“No,” said Ciaran confidently. “Definitely not.”

He declined any more cake for either Jack or himself, discussed what could be said to inquisitive neighbours, and thanked the Muirs for their hospitality. Jack obeyed instructions and kept quiet, although Ciaran noticed both the Muirs giving him the occasional curious glance. The newbie still looked as if he had quite literally seen a ghost.

Mr Muir came to the car with them. “Thank you,” he said. “I think that will help Corinne.” He sniffed the air. “That damn smell. It’s horrible. I’ve been on to the council and the water company about the drains but they say there’s nothing wrong.”

Jack got into the car while Ciaran put the equipment back in the boot and said a final goodbye to Mr Muir.

“Nice people,” he said, when he was seated next to Jack, watching Mr Muir walk back to the front door.

Jack made a slight retching sound.

Ciaran looked at him sharply. “If you’re going to throw up, wait till we’re out of sight of the Muirs. Actually, don’t be sick in my bloody car.”

Jack nodded silently.

Ciaran drove faster than he should down Turnlove Lane, making a sharp turn on to one of the roads leading down to the river. Jack tumbled out of the car and heaved his guts up over the grass by the riverside path.

Suddenly, Ciaran realised how much he missed Isla. He hadn’t meant to upset her. He’d liked her a lot and they’d had a lot of fun. It had never occurred to him that she was taking it seriously.

He glanced at his watch. It was nearly 12.30. He had a feeling he would be having lunch on his own.

And they still had the theatre to go.

 

Picture by itchys, copyright free on Wikimedia Commons: File:Play equipment 05 horse - by itchys.jpg - Wikimedia Commons