The Creeps: A Samuel Johnson Tale

II

In Which Someone Sees a Ghost (Yawn)

AS HAS ALREADY BEEN established, the town of Biddlecombe was a lot odder than it once had been, but the curious thing about Biddlecombe was that it had always been ever so slightly strange, even before the attempted invasion from Hell. It was just that people in Biddlecombe had chosen not to remark upon its strangeness, perhaps in the hope that the strangeness might eventually grow tired of being ignored and just go and be strange somewhere else.

For example, it was well known that if you took a right turn on Machen Street, and then a left turn on Poe Place, you ended up back on the same corner of Machen Street from which you had recently started. The residents of Biddlecombe got round this peculiar geographical anomaly by avoiding that particular corner of Machen Street entirely, instead using the shortcut through Mary Shelley Lane. Visitors to Biddlecombe, though, tended not to know about the shortcut, and thus they had been known to spend a great deal of time moving back and forth between Machen Street and Poe Place until somebody local came along and rescued them.

And then there was the small matter of the statue of Hilary Mould, Biddlecombe’s leading architect. Nobody could remember who had ordered the statue, or how it had come to be in Biddlecombe, but the statue had turned up sometime in the nineteenth century, shortly after Mould disappeared under circumstances that might have been described as mysterious if anyone had cared enough about Mould to miss him when he was gone, which they didn’t because Mould’s buildings were all ugly and awful.

The statue of Hilary Mould wasn’t much lovelier than the buildings he had designed, Mould not being the most handsome of men, and it had often been suggested that it should quietly be taken away and lost. But the statue of Hilary Mould had a habit of moving around, so there was no way of knowing where it might be from one day to the next. It was usually to be found near one of the six buildings in Biddlecombe that Mould had designed, as if the architect couldn’t bear to be separated from his work.

As with so many of the strange things about Biddlecombe, the townsfolk decided that the best thing for it was to ignore the statue and let it go about its business.

Which was, as we shall come to learn, a terrible mistake.

• • •

As it happened, the statue of  Hilary Mould was, at that moment, lurking in a still and silent way near what appeared to be an old sweet factory but which now housed a secret laboratory. Inside the laboratory, Brian, the new tea boy, had just seen a ghost.

The effect this had on Brian was quite considerable. First of all he turned pale, so that he bore something of a resemblance to a ghost himself. Second, he dropped the tray that he was carrying, sending three cups of tea, two coffees, and a plate of assorted biscuits—including some Jammie Dodgers,⁴ of which Professor Stefan, the Head of Particle Physics, was especially fond—crashing to the floor, along with the tray on which they were all being carried. Finally, after tottering on his heels for a bit, Brian followed the tray downwards.

It was only Brian’s second day on the job at the secret Biddlecombe annex of CERN, the advanced research facility in Switzerland that housed the Large Hadron Collider, the massive particle accelerator which was, at that very moment, trying to uncover the secrets of the universe by re-creating the moments after the Big Bang. The Collider had been notably successful in this, and appeared to have confirmed the existence of a particle known as the Higgs Boson, which was believed to be responsible for giving mass to the universe.⁵

The Biddlecombe annex had been set up to examine the strange goings-on in the town in question, which had so far included the dead coming back to life, an attempted invasion by the Devil and all of his demonic hordes, and the abduction to Hell of a small boy, his dachshund, a number of dwarfs, two policemen, and an ice-cream salesman. It was clear to the scientists that Biddlecombe was the site of a link between our universe and another universe that wasn’t half as nice, and they had decided to set up an office there in the hope that something else very bad might happen so they could watch and take notes, and perhaps win a prize.

The problem was that the good people of Biddlecombe didn’t particularly want scientists lurking around every corner and asking hopefully if anyone had been abducted, possessed, or attacked by something with too many arms. The people of Biddlecombe were hoping that whatever hole had opened between universes might have closed by now, or been filled in by the council. At the very least they wanted to forget about it because, if they did, then it might forget about them, as they had quite enough to be getting along with, what with rescuing tourists from the corner of Machen Street and avoiding walking into old statues.

The result was that the scientists had been forced to sneak into Biddlecombe and cleverly hide themselves in a secure location. Of course, Biddlecombe being a small place, everyone in the town knew that the scientists had come back. Now they could only pray that the scientists might blow themselves up, or conveniently vanish into another dimension.

The location of the secret facility was slightly—well, considerably—less spectacular than CERN’s massive operation in Switzerland. The annex was housed in the building formerly occupied by Mr. Pennyfarthinge’s Olde Sweete⁶ Shoppe & Factorye,⁷ unoccupied ever since a tragic accident involving Mr. Pennyfarthinge, an unsteady ladder, and seventeen jars of gobstoppers. To keep up the pretense, the scientists had reopened the sweete shoppe and took it in turns to serve sherbet dabs, licorice allsorts, and Uncle Dabney’s Impossibly Sour Chews⁸ to various small persons for an hour or two each day.

Technically, Brian was not, in fact, a tea boy, but a laboratory assistant. Nevertheless, as he was the new kid, his duties had so far extended only to boiling the kettle, making the tea, and keeping a close watch on the Jammie Dodgers, as Professor Stefan was convinced that someone was stealing Jammie Dodgers from the biscuit tin. Professor Stefan was wrong about this. It wasn’t “someone” who was stealing Jammie Dodgers.

It was everyone.

Brian’s proper title was “Assistant Deputy Assistant to the Assistant Assistant to the Assistant Head of Particle Physics,” or ADAAAAHPT for short.

Which, oddly enough, was the last sound Brian made before he fell to the floor.

“Adaaaahpt,” said Brian. Thump.

The noise caused Professor Stefan, who was concentrating very hard on a piece of data analysis, to drop his pen, and Professor Stefan hated dropping pens. They always managed to roll right against the wall, and then he had to get down on his hands and knees to find them, or send the Assistant Deputy Assistant to the Assistant Assistant to the Assistant Head of Particle Physics to do it for him. Unfortunately, the ADAAAAHPT was now flat on his back, moaning softly.

“What is the ADAAAAHPT doing on the floor?” said Professor Stefan. “He’s your responsibility, Hilbert. You can’t just leave assistants lying around. Makes the place look untidy.”

Professor Hilbert, the Assistant Head of Particle Physics, looked at Brian in puzzlement.

“He appears to have fainted.”

“Fainted?” said Professor Stefan. “Fainted? Listen here, Hilbert: Elderly ladies faint. Young women of a delicate disposition faint. Assistants do not faint. Tell him to stop all of this nonsense immediately. I want my Jammie Dodgers. He’ll have to get some fresh ones. I’m not eating those ones after they’ve been on the floor. We can give them to the numbskulls in Technical Support.”

“We don’t have any Technical Support,” said Professor Hilbert. “There’s only Brian.”

He helped Brian to sit up, which meant that Professor Hilbert was now technically supporting Technical Support.

“Guh—” said Brian.

“No, it’s not good,” said Professor Hilbert. “It’s not good at all.”

“Guh—” said Brian again.

“I think he may have bumped his head,” said Professor Hilbert. “He keeps saying that it’s good.”

“You mean that he’s bumped his head so hard he thinks good is bad?” said Professor Stefan. “We can’t have that. Next he’ll be going around killing chaps and asking for a round of applause as he presents us with their heads. He’ll make a terrible mess.”

Brian raised his right hand, and extended the index finger.

“It’s a guh—it’s a guh—it’s a guh—”

“What’s he doing now, Hilbert?”

“I think he’s rapping, Professor.”

“Oh, do make him stop. We’ll have no hip-hoppity music here. Awful racket. Now, opera, there’s—”

“IT’S. A. GHOST!” shrieked Brian.

Professor Hilbert noticed that Brian’s hair was standing on end, and his skin was covered in goose bumps. The atmosphere in the lab had also grown considerably colder. Professor Hilbert could see Brian’s breath. He could see his own breath. He could even see Professor Stefan’s breath. He could not, however, see the breath of the semitransparent young woman, dressed as a servant girl, who was standing in a corner and fiddling with something that was obvious only to her. Her image flickered slightly, as though it were being projected imperfectly from nearby.

Professor Hilbert stopped supporting Brian, who duly fell backward and would have banged his head painfully had not some Jammie Dodgers absorbed most of the impact.

“So it is,” said Professor Hilbert. “I say, it’s another ghost.”

Professor Stefan peered at the young woman over the top of his spectacles.

“A new one, too. Haven’t seen her before.”

Professor Hilbert carefully approached the ghost.

“Hello,” he said. He waved his hand in front of the ghost’s face, but she didn’t seem to notice. He considered his options, then poked at the woman’s ribs. His finger passed right through her.

“Bit rude,” said Professor Stefan disapprovingly. “You hardly know the girl.”

“Nothing,” said Professor Hilbert. “No response.”

“Just like the rest.”

“Indeed.”

Slowly, the image of the girl began to fade, until finally there was only a hint of vapor to indicate that she had ever been there at all, If, in fact, she had ever been there at all. Oh, she was certainly somewhere, of that Professor Hilbert was sure. He just wasn’t convinced that the somewhere in question was a laboratory in twenty-first-century Biddlecombe.

Brian had managed to struggle to his feet, and was now picking pieces of Jammie Dodger from his hair. He stared at the corner where the girl had been.

“I thought I saw a ghost,” he said.

“Yes,” said Professor Hilbert. “Well done, you. And on only your second day, too. You can’t go around fainting every time you see one, though. You’ll end up on the floor more often than you’re upright if you do.”

“But it was a ghost.”

“Just make a note of it, there’s a good chap. See that big hard-backed notebook on the desk over there?” He pointed to a massive black volume, bound in leather. “That’s our record of ‘ghost sightings.’ Write down the time it began, the time it ended, what you saw, then sign it. Professor Stefan and I will add our initials when you’re done. To save yourself some time, just turn straight to page two hundred and seventy-six. That’s the page we’re on now, I think.”

Brian looked like he might faint again.

“Page two hundred and seventy-six? You mean that you’ve filled two hundred and seventy-five other pages with ghost sightings?”

Professor Hilbert laughed. Even Professor Stefan joined in, although he was still disturbed at the loss of so many perfectly good Jammie Dodgers.

“Two hundred and seventy-five pages!” said Professor Stefan. “Young people and their ideas, eh?”

“Two hundred and seventy-five pages!” said Professor Hilbert. “Dear oh dear, where do we get these kids from? No, Brian, that would just be silly.”

He wiped a tear of mirth from his eye with a handkerchief.

“That’s volume three,” he explained. “We’ve filled one thousand two hundred and seventy-five pages with ghost sightings.”

At which point Brian fell over again. When he eventually recovered himself, he added the sighting to the book, just as he had been told. He noted down everything he had seen, including the hint of black vapor that had hung in the air like smoke after the ghost had disappeared. Had Professors Hilbert and Stefan taken the time to read Brian’s note, they might have found that black vapor very odd.

• • •

Outside, the statue of Hilary Mould stared, solid and unmoving, at the old factory. A cloud passed over the moon, casting the statue in shadow.

When the moon reappeared, the statue was gone.

4. For those of you reading in American instead of English, a Jammie Dodger is a popular English biscuit consisting of two pieces of shortbread with jam in the middle. And a biscuit is what you call a cookie, even though a cookie is just a cookie (a flat biscuity thing) everywhere else, and what you call a biscuit we call a scone, except we use butter and cream, and you use shortening or milk. And, while we’re on the subject, aluminium is spelled with two i’s, not one, although actually your American spelling is arguably the more correct since that’s the one that the British inventor Humphry Davy adopted for it in 1808, although you’re still wrong about changing words ending in –re (centre, spectre) to –er. In fact, even words like minister, monster, and November used to be spelled with an –re at one point, so it’s no use arguing. And it’s pronounced “Wooster” sauce although it’s spelled Worcestershire. Don’t ask me why. I’m Irish.

5. It was, to put it simply, the stuff that made stuff stuff.

6. Again, if you’re reading in American, we call them “sweets” and you call them “candy.” I’m not going to argue about it as long as you let me have one of yours.

7. There is a certain type of shop that just loves sticking the letter e on the end of words in the hope it will make said shop appear older and more respectable. Businesses selling candles, sweeties, Christmas decorations, and models of fairies are particularly prone to this, although in reality the only thing that the e adds is 10 percent extra on to the price of everything. Mr. Pennyfarthinge’s fondness for the “Olde E” was so extreme as to qualifye as a forme of mentale illnesse.

8. Uncle Dabney’s Impossibly Sour Chews were banned in a number of countries after the sheer sourness of them had turned the faces of several small boys inside out. See also: Uncle Dabney’s Dangerously Explosive Spacedust (tooth loss due to explosions), Uncle Dabney’s Glow-in-the-Dark Radiation Gums (hair loss due to radiation poisoning), and Uncle Dabney’s Frog-Shaped Pastilles (mysterious disappearance of entire populations of certain frogs). The late Uncle Dabney was, of course, quite insane, but he made curiously good sweets.