made a brief exploratory foray into the upholstered softness: no vehicles moving on the square, the little market hall squatting like a white-capped mushroom, lighted windows in the Black Swan reduced to shining slits by high sills of snow. The Swan was a local pub again, its car trade in retreat.
Merrily and Lol came back in, and she shut the front door and stood eye to eye with the lamp-bearing Christ, lord of weary acceptance.
‘Wouldn’t even get to the main road, would we?’
She brushed down Jane’s fleece, kicked off her wellingtons, sending shards of snow skating across the mat and the flagstones. Lol followed her through to the scullery, where Ethel the cat dozed in front of the electric fire. He sat down in front of the computer, snow melting into his hair.
‘There you go.’
She leaned against him. ‘What?’
Thank you for your inquiry. To be conversant with the Stanner Project, it is clear you must have contacts in the Psychic World, although I have not heard of you. Accordingly, I attach our fact sheet.
The involvement of Sir Arthur himself in the events of 1899, combined with the subsequent history makes this, for us, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and we very much hope to go ahead this weekend. However, the state of the weather means that we may be fewer in number than was originally anticipated and so, if you are a genuine person residing sufficiently close to Stanner Hall as to be able to journey here, we would be interested to hear more from you. We make no secret of our work, but it is essential that only sympathetic and like-minded people are involved as I am sure you appreciate. Please e-mail me again if you are interested. I shall be communicating with several other individuals throughout the evening and therefore shall be available should you wish to know more.
All good wishes,
Matthew
Lol looked up at her through his brass-rimmed glasses.
‘Confirmation.’ Merrily moved to the window, looked out at the ghosts of apple trees. ‘It looks like they’re there already. I… I’m just… Well, I’m not well disposed towards my daughter.’ Turning and throwing up her hands in frustration. ‘
The electric fire put a blush on the white wall under the window — a poor defence, Merrily thought, against the winged spirits of the night, the
‘Might as well find out the rest.’ Lol clicked on the attachment.
THE STANNER PROJECT
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle seemed, in his later years, to be in a permanent state of excitement and anticipation, always believing that his field of study would eventually change everyone’s life, removing all fear and uncertainty about the nature of death, dispelling centuries of superstition and removing the residual control still exercised over the less-sophisticated by the Church.
The White Company has come to believe that ACD’s own certainty stemmed, in part, from an experience that occurred at the end of the nineteenth century, when he was already a successful author and a wealthy man, at a time when he was re-evaluating his life and searching for a new purpose. A ‘mid-life crisis’, if you like.
We believe that his initial baptism — a ‘baptism of fire’ — occurred at Stanner Hall, on the border of Herefordshire, England, and Powys, Wales, when he took part in what had originally been devised as little more than a party game for his amusement but which turned into something profoundly disturbing — so disturbing, in fact, that ACD, with his, at the time, limited knowledge was only able to deal with it by fictionalizing it in a way that would eliminate all paranormal implications.
We suspect it was many years before he was able to understand the true psychic and psychological implications of the Stanner experience, if indeed he reached a full understanding prior to his passing in 1930.
The Stanner Project, involving Mr Alistair Hardy and others, will attempt to re-examine the Experience in the light of more recent developments in psychical and psychological thinking and perhaps point the way to the breakthrough anticipated by ACD. The implications of this are quite awesome and any information, particularly with regard to the anomaly, which might further our inquiries even at this late stage would be gratefully received.
‘Certainly explains why Jane kept it to herself.’ Merrily gave the document to the printer. ‘ “Something profoundly disturbing”. That’s comforting, isn’t it? I’ll be able to sleep now.’
‘And the breakthrough… would be what?’
‘Always the same one with these people: final, undeniable proof of life after death. Kept Conan Doyle in transatlantic lecture tours for over twenty years.’
‘Matthew implies that the real reason the Church is opposed to spiritualism is not, as
She stood there with Jane’s fleece hanging open and her pectoral cross swinging free. Of course she wondered.
Lol said, ‘Like, if these people were, suddenly, out of the blue to happen upon absolute, undeniable evidence of an afterlife?’
‘The atheists and the physicists would still deny it.’
‘What about the Christians?’
‘Ah well, even if we had to accept it as fact, it would still only be the beginning for us. However far it went, it would be the beginning. But look, they won’t, will they? They won’t find it. Because apart from anything, I don’t believe truth is ever going to come out of terror. Portents of death, the Hounds of Annwn?’
Merrily flinched. ‘If this turns out to be Dexter and Alice again, I don’t think I can face it.’
Lol stood up. ‘I’ll get it.’
‘No, best if—’
She watched his face fall. Another test failed. Dammit, they had to get over this stupid concealment of the obvious.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘If you would.’
The kitchen was empty, every surface clean, as if the house was being vacated for a while. Amber stood next to the stove, which was something French and steely grey. The smell of rich chocolate seemed inappropriate tonight. The lights in here made Amber look ill.
‘As soon as they found out what your mother actually did, they thought it would be a good… friction point.’ The size and the emptiness of the kitchen made her voice sound forced and full of fissures, like a student teacher on day one.
Jane still wasn’t getting it. ‘Friction?’
‘If the Diocesan Exorcist jumped in with some dire warning about the risks of messing with spirits, they thought that would be a nice touch. Then they’d try and get her to express decent Christian reservations on video. And even if she wouldn’t play, it would still be a nice twist. Friction, you see, Jane. Friction’s sexy.’
‘Amber, I’m not—
‘Ben. And Antony.’
‘They wanted to—’
‘Ben knew I wasn’t happy about the spiritualism angle from the start. He suggested I give your mother a ring and ask her advice. Pretend I was doing it behind his back. And if she reacted badly and tried to stop you coming here as a result, that would make another good twist. Twists are important. Conflict and friction and twists.’
Jane sagged. ‘They’d have used us… as
‘Jane, love, don’t get this wrong — they never think of it as any kind of betrayal. It’s just television. It’s feeding the monster. TV’s this awful, voracious predator; if you get too near, you inevitably get eaten. I’m not
