Tomorrow's Ghosts Read online

  Then she heads for the door, pausing to give me a chaste but still unexpected kiss on the cheek, and climbs into her car, a battered old Volkswagen Beetle.

  Just as she is about to pull away, the Reverend Ursula winds down the window and calls out, in a very bad fake German accent “You’d better be careful, I’m like Arnie in The Terminator, I’ll be back!”

  I laugh, return to my guitar and, for the first time in years, begin picking out the opening chords to Led Zeppelin’s Stairway to Heaven.

  2. The Wreck of the Four Apostles

  The new vicar is as good as her word. She said she’d be back and she is. About three weeks later I hear the sound of her Beetle pootling its way up the track to my cottage. It pulls to a halt outside and a few moments later there is a knock at my door. I open it and once more find the Reverend Ursula on my doorstep.

  “I was going to give you a little speech,” she says, “apologising for rushing off so suddenly the other week but I’ve rather lost track of what I was going to say. It’s your ghost. I caught a glimpse of her again, only this time she was leaning out of the window and she waved at me!”

  “Yes,” I reply, “she does do that from time-to-time. It can be disconcerting.”

  “Does she have any other foibles or favourite haunts I ought to know about?”

  “There are a couple more,” I say noncommittally (as I’m certainly not going to tell the vicar about the ghost’s X-rated bedroom materialisations when she looks more like Titian’s Venus d’Urbino) “but she mainly confines herself to appearing by that window in the afternoon.”

  “Good,” Ursula replies, “because if I’m going to be a regular visitor here, I don’t want to be worrying about when and where I’m next going to encounter her.”

  “So you are going to be a regular visitor here now are you?”

  “Well I did warn you I’m like The Terminator and that I’d be back.”

  I nod thoughtfully. “Either life in this parish is so dull that spending your afternoons drinking cheap rosé wine with me seems an attractive proposition. Or, something has happened.”

  She blushes. “Am I that transparent? You’re right, something has happened.” She pauses to take a deep breath. “There’s a lot of weird stuff going on in this diocese. I’d spotted a few, shall we say, causes for concern before I first visited you here. But, at the latest diocesan meeting, when I was chatting to representatives from the other parishes, I began to realise there was so much more going on than I’d thought. I also had a quiet word with your friend the Archdeacon. He confirmed that the diocese is getting an increasing number of requests for assistance. Then he told me that I should seek you out for help, because of your extensive experience and because you can be relied upon to be discreet.”

  “That’s me, good old Mister Soul of Discretion,” I say with a smile. “But you said weird stuff. What sort of weird?”

  “Your sort of weird!”

  “Ah,” I reply, “that’ll be the coming apocalypse then.”

  “What apocalypse? I thought we’d survived that Mayan End of Days thing?”

  “In this line of business, apocalypses are like London buses. If you miss the first one, two more will be along shortly.

  “Never mind the Mayans, you Christians have your own Rapture. Both the Hebrew and Islamic messianic traditions tell of a Day of Judgement and an End of Times apocalypse. Then there is the Hindu Kali Yuga apocalypse. The Norse Ragnorak apocalypse. The Zombie apocalypse. Even the Buddhists of all people have some apocalyptical beliefs. The New Age hippies say we’re about to enter the Age of Aquarius and there’s also a weird end-of-the-world cult in Japan that involves Mickey Mouse.

  “I was joking about the zombies by the way but not Mickey Mouse although the Disney Corporation’s lawyers do a good job of keeping a lid on that one. Not exactly the kind of publicity they want associated with their theme parks.”

  Ursula says nothing for a few seconds before replying. “I’m not sure if I approve of you lumping together the religious and mythical. Christianity has a tradition going back over 2000 years whereas the Norse sagas are...”

  “Are just fairy stories,” I suggest. “Unlike the beliefs of established religions which are what?”

  I leave the question and there is an awkward silence for a few moments that leaves me wondering whether I may have gone too far and Ursula is suddenly going to have to remember another meeting she needs to rush off to attend but then she shrugs her shoulders.

  “Whatever,” she says, “but why so much activity around here in this Suffolk backwater? I’ve worked for most of my career in inner-city parishes, where there are thousands of people getting up to all kinds of wickedness and mischief but nothing like this.”

  “Nothing like you’ve uncovered in these crooked counties eh, as Sherlock Holmes would have put it? Perhaps that’s true but just look around you. We’ve got prehistoric settlements, Druid ritual sites, Roman ruins, pagan Saxon burial mounds and some of the oldest Christian churches in the country. This is also the land of Queen Boudicca, the Sutton Hoo ship burial, Witch-Finder General Matthew Hopkins and M R James’ ghost stories.

  “Your whole diocese is based on the veneration of a Saxon king, Saint Edmund the Martyr, who was ritually murdered by the Vikings. Is it surprising this place is a veritable supernatural smorgasbord of ancient mysticism, ghostly manifestations, paranormal energy, occult influences and both black and white magical forces. By the way, as part of your patch are you responsible for St Margaret’s at Hopton-on-Sea?”

  “Yes,” she replies.

  “It’s one of those diocesan peculiars dating back to when Hopton was still part of Suffolk, rather than Norfolk where it now is after the county boundaries were shifted. Archdeacon Mitchell Jaffa did explain it to me once. Anyway, that’s a digression, the point is have you ever stayed overnight in the Old Vicarage there? And if you have, I bet you had bad dreams.”

  She shakes her head in disbelief. “How did you know that? Who told you? It was just the once and I had a horribly disturbed night’s sleep. One nightmare after another. But I put it down to the three-bean-and-chickpea vegetarian chilli con carne I had for supper in the village hall after a meeting with the churchwardens.”

  I wince at her description of the meal. “That’ll teach you to give peas a chance! Of course it could have been nothing more than chronic indigestion but did you know one of the most powerful ley lines on the planet, the Great Saint Michael Line running from Land’s End to the North Sea coast at Hopton-on-Sea, cuts across the parish. In fact it runs straight through the most ancient part of the Hopton vicarage. The ley line follows the path of the Sun on the 8th of May.”

  “That’s the Spring Festival of St Michael?”

  “Precisely, its influence is said to be at its most powerful and most dangerous at dawn that day. There’s a rumour, strongly denied by the Archdeacon I should add although that only gives it more credibility as far as I’m concerned, about one of your predecessors going mad after sleeping in the vicarage on such a night. Apparently he went to bed on the evening of the 7th of May totally sane but woke up the following morning in such an unhinged and demented state that he rushed out of the vicarage in his nightshirt and set fire to the church. That’s not the current church but the original St Margaret’s, which is now nothing more than a ruined tower and chancel. But come on, out with it, you still haven’t answered my question. What particular manifestation of the weird prompted you to seek me out today?”

  After a moment she answers me. “Have you heard of a character called John Patmos, who lurks around this parish and apparently claims to be the reincarnation of Saint John the Divine?”

  I’ve been asked some odd questions in my time but this one is so surreal it makes me laugh out loud. “Don’t tell me,” I reply, “John is scaring the natives again with his prophecies? He’s been telling little old ladies that at any moment the Great Whore of Babylon is going to sweep into Aldeburgh, astride the Seven Headed Beast
of the Revelations, to carry off to Hell any senior citizens who’ve ever drunk anything stronger than cream sherry. So now a deputation of concerned parishioners has asked you to intervene?”

  She nods her head in agreement. “So you have heard of him?”

  “Oh, yes and let me guess, you asked the Archdeacon for guidance?” She nods again. “And he referred you straight back to me.”

  “Right again. In fact he said Lex Byter is the only man you need to speak to as he’s known Patmos for longer than anyone in this part of the world. So is he your friend?”

  I shake my head. “I suppose I have known him longer than anyone else although that’s not saying very much. But, I wouldn’t describe him as a friend, way too flakey for my taste.”

  “So?” she prompts.

  “So I guess I do have some involvement as I’m the person who first found him. Saved him from a watery grave.”

  “You found him?”

  “It began like this... it was an early November about ten years ago. I was in a relationship with a poet at the time. You are actually sitting in an armchair she gave me, in an attempt to domesticate me. It didn’t work, my world was incompatible with the world she occupied. Anyway, she lived in Cornwall but had been invited up to Aldeburgh to read at the annual poetry festival. We’d stayed together at the White Lion Hotel for the weekend and on the Sunday afternoon, after she headed back to the South West by train, I was cycling back home to Dunwich. I’d only gone a couple of miles riding along the coast road that runs into Thorpeness. Do you know it?”

  “The place with The House-in-the-Clouds folly and the ersatz mediaeval castle?”

  “The very same place,” I reply, “when I noticed some large pieces of wreckage washed up on the beach. They hadn’t been there a couple of days previously, when I’d made my way in to Aldeburgh, and the fact they were lying on the tideline with incoming waves breaking over them made me think they must be part of a very recent shipwreck. So, I left the road and walked across the beach to take a closer look. I could see parts of a white painted hull and what looked like varnished deck-planking. There were also some large strips of canvas sail washed up in the surf.”

  “The wreck of a yacht?” suggests Ursula.

  “That or at least a sailing boat of some sort. Then I spotted the body of a man lying entwined in the rigging still attached to a broken mast spar. Of course I ran over and to my surprise and relief found he was still alive. I assumed he must have been caught up in the rigging and dragged to his fate but it subsequently transpired that when the yacht started to break up, he tied himself to the spar and used it to keep himself afloat in the swell.

  “I gave him a combination of mouth-to-mouth resuscitation and CPR, improvising madly as kissing bearded sailors is not something I’d had any prior experience of, and after a couple of minutes he was breathing regularly. He opened his eyes and stared straight at me. It was a look of fear... of incomprehension, as if he didn’t know where he was. And then he opened his mouth and spoke. His first few words were in Aramaic and then he switched to Greek, but it was in Koine, an archaic form of Greek rather than the modern variety.”

  “You understand Aramaic? The language of the Messiah!”

  “It can come in handy in my line of work, it’s the language of choice among all major league demons.”

  Ursula gives me a quizzical look before asking me what the shipwrecked mariner said.

  “He said, and I’ll paraphrase what was a long and rambling speech – and I admit my Aramaic is a little rusty...

  ‘I was on a galley carrying me from the Island of Patmos when a squall erupted. Then, from out of the storm-lashed waves, the Great Beast rose and bore down on our galley, its many heads twisting and writhing in anger, and shattering our oars and masts as if they were but matchwood. Our vessel began to founder and I was pitched into the roiling waters. There I grabbed onto a splintered transom for buoyancy. Then darkness overcame me and when I awoke I was wearing strange raiments, still clutching at a spar of timber but in a cold and alien ocean.’

  That’s his story and he stuck with it. It was the same tale he consistently told the ambulance crew, who I’d called to the scene, and later both the police and the Coastguards when they investigated his experiences.”

  “Do you believe him?”

  I shrug my shoulders. “If he is Saint John the Divine, then we have to believe he fell through a tear in the fabric of time that propelled him the best part of 2000 years into his future. I think a more likely explanation is as a result of shock, post-traumatic stress disorder, physical injury – maybe a blow to his head while the yacht was breaking or hypoxia from nearly drowning – he now genuinely believes he is Saint John of the Book of Revelations.”

  “What was the official explanation?”

  “The wreckage definitely belonged to a yacht, a yacht called The Four Apostles that was registered on the Greek island of Patmos. It had been in British waters throughout the summer, taking part in various races and regattas around the coast. Its crew were last seen drinking in the yacht club at Lowestoft. They were discussing sailing the boat down to the marina at Ramsgate, where they were due to meet up again with her owner, who had been away on business. There was one crew member among them who spoke mainly Greek or, more to the point, very little English and who fitted our shipwrecked mariner’s description. But that’s as far as it went.

  “The guy I found on the shore that evening had no identification papers nor any memory of either who he was or where he’d come from. He was the sole survivor. No other bodies were ever found. Unhelpfully, there were no records of anyone fitting his description being reported missing in Greece. In the absence of anything better to call him, somebody in one of the seamen’s missions where he was staying put the name John Patmos on his paperwork. And it stuck.

  “The next thing I heard, he was learning English and living in a beach house. Actually that description is a little over-generous. It’s more of a wooden hut on a run-down caravan park near Pakefield just south of Lowestoft.” I pause. “But then came the fateful day he saw his first Punch and Judy show.”

  “What!” exclaims Ursula.

  “You heard me right, Punch and bloody Judy! What happened is he saw his first ever Punch and Judy show about eight years ago, on the pleasure beach at Great Yarmouth. It was one of your interfering do-gooder predecessors who decided it might be nice to introduce this poor shipwrecked foreigner to a little bit of traditional English popular culture. Ice cream, fish and chips, candy-floss and a puppet of a little man in a red coat who beats his wife and baby to death before being attacked by clowns, ghosts, a hangman, the Devil and a crocodile. The experience blew John’s mind, which had quite clearly been in tatters since the day he was first washed ashore, if not before. It clearly struck an unfortunate chord in his psyche that set off all his worst apocalyptic fantasies.”

  “Such as?” asks Ursula.

  “Such as? Well, why don’t we go ask him ourselves.”

  3. Punch and Brandy

  Forty minutes later we pull into the caravan park near Pakefield in Ursula’s Beetle.

  “I see what you mean about beach house being a generous description,” says Ursula, as we park outside John’s black tar-clad hut.

  “This is nothing,” I reply, “just wait until you see inside.”

  She flashes me a worried look. Justified as it happens, as the interior of the building is painted throughout in narrow, red-and-white vertical stripes, echoing the candy-stripe canvas exterior of a Punch and Judy booth. I hear Ursula take a sharp intake of breath for surrounding us, everywhere we turn (and I do mean everywhere) on table tops, propped up on book shelves or else huddled together for support on chairs, are a legion of Punch and Judy show puppets, their staring, painted eyes seemingly following us around the room.

  John greets me as if I’m one of his oldest friends and, I must confess, over the years we have met from time-to-time to share a bottle of Metaxa 7-Star Greek brandy and drin
k it late into the night discussing everything and nothing. He chastely greets Ursula as ‘Little Sister,’ his Greek Orthodox upbringing unable to conceive of women having any role to play within the church except as nuns.

  I fear John’s fascination with Punch and Judy has slipped over the boundary between healthy interest to unhealthy obsession as there are many more puppets here since the last time I visited. Old ones, dating back to the late nineteenth century, so badly battered hardly any of their original paint remains, along with newer ones, still in relatively pristine condition. And then there are ones John is creating from scratch, carving their heads from driftwood found on the beach.

  Along with Mister Punch, Judy, the Baby, the Policeman, the Doctor, Joey the Clown and the Crocodile, John also has some of the characters no longer regularly seen in modern seaside shows. There, sitting among John’s belongings, are Jack Ketch the Hangman, the Ghost, the Skeleton, Pretty Polly, the Devil and even a rare Mister Scaramouche, a puppet who’d vanished from the repertoires of most Punch and Judy professors long before my old mate Freddie Mercury thought it would make a neat line in a song.

  I think I know what’s going through Ursula’s mind, so I save her the trouble and ask the question for myself. “John, can you explain to us the evangelical significance of Punch and Judy?”

  John pauses for a moment, takes a deep breath and then the floodgates open “Shortly after you rescued me from the Tempest, I had a dream. It was a Revelation as God allowed me a glimpse of what He and His Heavenly Host has in store for Mankind.”

  I see Ursula glance my way and give me a he can’t really be serious look. I nod my head and make myself as comfortable as I can, sharing a raggedity charity shop sofa with two Mister Punch puppets, a headless Judy and a Crocodile with a broken lower jaw as, over the next hour, John Patmos talks of how his puppets are a metaphor symbolising the approaching Apocalypse and the struggle between Good and Evil.