Fisher And The Bears Page 4

  “I was wondering if your father fancied a bit of a challenge.” I said.

  She grinned, and showed me up, through the staunchly old fashioned house, which apart from a few gadgets and modern conveniences, looks as though it was preserved in amber sometime around the nineteen twenties. So had her father. By rights the tall, craggy, noble man who always dressed like he was on his way to the opera, should have been shrivelled and mummified. Mrs Sussex was his daughter, and she was herself well into retirement. He had hinted more than once he did not have her as a young man. His ancient face beamed at me as he lifted the veil of his bee keeping outfit and put down his smoke can.

  “Ah! King the younger! How are you my boy? How are you?” He narrowed his eyes. “I detect a distinct lack of breaking crockery or unfortunate incidents. None of our little friends with you?”

  “Not at the moment.” I said. “And I would rather be done before any appear from nowhere.” I handed him my carrier bag. “My fathers egg was stolen from the Hall of U-WAT. The thief sent it him with a dangerous item that put your daughter in terrible danger and almost caused untold damage to the bears.”

  “The ghost of one Obadiah Hog weed” Said the bright haired old man. “But the ghost was contained in the device I understand? So you wish me to discover who sent this to your father to begin with? The mortal hand between the supernatural threat?” He nodded. “I will do this. If you intend to do it with out others knowing I suggest you do not call me Mister Sussex when we communicate lest anybody works it out.”

  “Then how would you feel comfortable with me addressing you sir?” I asked.

  “Clarumcoma,” he said with a twinkle in his eyes. “Clarum for short. Yes. Clarum. I think I would very much like you to call me that.” He seemed far too cheerful. It was not his name, and I have no idea why he would feel the need to be secretive, but I needed his help and I liked him, so I nodded and agreed.

  “I will be in touch.” He told me as I left. “Do not fear.”

  I walked home along the sea front. Haunted by my thoughts. This did not feel much like a happy ending. It felt like a beginning.

  A Kinder Magic

  The screen was blank for several seconds. Then at long last an image swam to life. A man, short, on the far side of middle age, his thinning red hair combed to hide his bald spot, his moustache slightly stained from decades of cigarettes. His eyes wide and sparkling. His accent was Northern, but as the footage started and he said: “So are you sure we need to do this?” He was looking at some paper, the script, through some glasses. “It seems a little bitter, even for me.”

  “Is there a problem?” The voice off camera was female. Measured with a hint of authority. But exasperated.

  “It seems like we are pushing people away, not opening their eyes.” The man put away his glasses. “Never mind petal. I will try it your way.” He handed the script to somebody out of frame and waited for a clapper board to be held up. When he spoke again his voice had become a lot more working class, his elocution crude and hard edged. “Now. There are some folk who like to think they are smarter than us. They call themselves sceptics, but that is not what they are. Bullies. Cowards. Too afraid to see the world around them. Not just those who know nothing of the subject and are yet to decide. Those who would rather call us liars than face the truth. The hundreds of thousands of people who saw ghosts? Liars. The hundreds of thousands of people who experience demons, angels, or the multitude between? Liars? Everything can be explained by sound, or light, or smoke. And those of us who see the truth?” He laughed. “Mad, or wrong, or who knows what. I try to respect their belief of course, but I wish they would offer the same to us. Because when there is anything they can not explain, and no other option they will mock us. They will our beliefs. And true bravery my friends is when you know the truth and you weather the storm of ridicule. When you stand against the mocking laughter of all who will-” He stopped. He flopped back to a middle class. “Look. This is wrong. I am supposed to say I respect their right to believe in something, then cast them all as villains? Replace the word 'Sceptic' with 'Atheist', or any religion I don't share and that sounds vulgar.” He shook his head. “I am not doing this.”

  “It has to be like that.” The voice off camera said. “The story works better with a villain.”

  “No. You need it to look like that, like the family were Sceptics whose eyes were open. But the villain is The Voice. You need it to seem like they learned from a mistake, because everything we have on this story, all our evidence boils down to their word. And that is the only reason you want this whole speech about the weight of evidence. You hope that if we say this is one of a billion stories it suddenly becomes worth a damn.” He rubbed his nose. “Please, can I try another tact? I have a lot of fans who don't happen to believe every word I say, but enjoy the idea of a good ghost story. They want to be scared for the half hour I am on air then put it all away. I don't think they want to be the villains. Besides, we are talking about the unknown. How can I berate people for not happening to jump on my explanation for something that is, by definition, beyond our ken?”

  “Well, what do you suggest?” The female voice demanded.

  “Now.” The man said, once more in his working class tone. “There are those who will mock anything. Especially that they do not understand. It sometimes seems a sad fact of life that when you most need the support of others, you will find there is somebody all too willing to take a strange pleasure from the pain of others. Perhaps some find it easier to mock things I have seen, that I have experienced because, from their point of view, they are mocking nothing but fairy tales. I have always admired the bravery of those who endure the most terrifying of ordeals, the disbelief of their friends and kin, but above all the most mocking of those who are incapable of compassion. We are about to hear a story in which one of these bullies discovers exactly how wrong he has been. Then after that, we will be talking to the staff of an old shop. When they thought their workplace was haunted they took on the more admirable approach of mocking themselves and keeping the spirits up with fancy dress and Halloween games. But what if the Spirits did not want to be kept up? And what if they thought they were the ones being mocked? This week, on Dead Of Night.” He let his camera smile fade. “How was that?”

  “Did you see it?” Al Burgess pointed at himself on the screen. “Did you see it Fish?”

  I shrugged as he rewound the video.

  I watched it again, looking at the background. What I saw was not a person. Not unless I squinted right. A few dark pixels that swam across the screen, somewhere on the coast between the slightly younger, slightly heavier version of Burgess than the one on whose sofa I was perched. It seemed to glide from left to right. Floating over the dank sand of the beach. Perhaps, if you squinted right, it might seem to be a monk in a dark hood, or a woman in a skirt.

  Ted saw it. Theodore Edison Bear put his plate of biscuits aside and walked to the television in the corner of the large airy lounge, his nose almost on the screen.

  “That is spooky!” He said.

  “Yes.” Al nodded. “But what is it?” He had an expectant look on his face.

  “A Demon?” Ginger guessed.

  “A Ghost?” Suggested Tiger.

  “A column of midges.” Ted looked up and grinned. “It is isn't it.”

  Al put a finger to his nose. “I don't need my degree in Occult Demonology to tell when I am looking at something that is not a ghost.” His smile stayed on his lips. But it froze there. “Which kind of makes it weird.”

  “Makes what weird?” I asked, getting a chill down my spine. Al had been sharing spooky stories on air for decades. Mostly on his late night supernatural themed call in show on SeaBreezeFM. More recently when Mediums In Haunted Houses became the flavour of the month on TV his Dead Of Night show got shifted to the small screen. With some moderate success apparently. I did not really watch it, as it all seemed a bit of a busman's holiday to me. Ghosts and Demons it seemed liked to play up fo
r the camera. Al was a professional enough Oculist to know when he was best off asking for help. Which was good. But he often asked me for help. Which could be less good.

  Mostly because of the disembodied voice that could be heard on the videos. Pamela Stoke, his director and producer. She was hired to be one, then fired the other to keep the cost down. She was a fierce looking woman in a power suit, who was always completely blinkered towards the narrative she wanted her film to show, regardless of events. The first time I had seen her she had been exploding out of a supposedly haunted pub screaming at Al that “Robson would have made it scarier.” To which Al had politely pointed out he was not going to imitate anybody else.

  “She was a good lass.” Al said quietly. “Behind all the bluster. She was a good lass but she didn't understand what the show was about. She always wanted it to be scary, as though that was the only thing that could draw somebody across the veil. But I did not want to be forever telling grisly, scary, horror stories. Other people do that. I wanted to talk about the love, the loyalty, the bravery, the charm...” His voice trailed off. “I wanted the world to see the beauty that was in the world. I wanted them to know that when our loved ones are taken from us their love endures. They do not simply cease to be. The Kinder Magic.”

  I gave Tiger a nod. She and a few others scampered in the direction of Al's kitchen. There was the burble of a boiling kettle, a few crashes of china and cutlery, then she emerged with a fresh pot of Breakfast Tea and a small jug of milk.

  “Al.” I spoke quietly and evenly. “I know her being taken from us all was a shock. But you know the first rule. First identify if there is something. You said yourself, that was just a pillar of insects. Maybe this is just that. Are you sure it wasn't a coincidence?”

  “No.” He said. He ejected one disc from the machine and slipped another in. Another recording from another day of filming. He pointed at the screen.

  “Some of you may believe the lights glimpsed by many in the sky are aliens. Or spaceships. Or some other mysterious craft. But how can we be so sure we have identified the Unidentified Flying Objects? In this story I am going to speak to a couple from Romania whose experiences hint that the UFO is far more Unknown than we may have dared to think. This may seem harrowing to some. Flashing images from the start.” A far more recent Al was still presenting the links for the show on the beach. This time in a flurry of snow.

  The same dark pixels, the same ethereal shape flowed across the screen.

  “These images were not there.” Al said. “Look at my own copy.” He played the same scene again from a different disc. No shadow. No column of insects. “I have looked back over every disc she had in her desk at her house. Her son gave them to me. That thing is there, on every disc. Every piece of footage she filmed, or was present for filming. All of them. But only in the copy she kept.”

  “Okay.” Ginger tugged at my sleeve. “That is pretty spooky.”

  There were noises of agreement from the other bears.

  “So what is it you think did this?” I asked. “The video artefact fairy?”

  “I think,” Ted said gloomily, “maybe our friend Pamela Stoke was looking for her kind of story. I think maybe she went looking for something truly scary for the show, and maybe she found it.”

  “Or,” Ginger added, putting on a pair of shades and tilting his head in a way he wanted desperately to be cool, “it found her.”

  “I just want you to take a look and make sure.” Al said. “Before her funeral. Make sure there is nothing that is going to get in the way of her family mourning and healing at this delicate time.”

  “Sure.” I heard myself day. “We would love to help, right guys?” I waited for a response. “Guys?”

  “Of course.” Tiger said. “Anything we can do.”

  *

  The body was gone, the police tape was gone, the white suited forensic technicians and their cameras, their markers, their evidence kits, the line of officers fine combing the beach, and the general swarm of activity around a murder, had all gone. But the memory of the death lingered. The air was cool, the waves a mournful grey, the sky full of solemn clouds. Tiger and Ginger were with me as I hopped down the steps to the lonely stretch of clay coloured sand far from the pier. The lonely stretch with the distinctive rocks, that she had always favoured as a filming location because she could frame Al against the fossil filled brown cliffs with the Knights Azrael church on their crown.

  Tiger rolled out the blanket and sat beside me as I unfastened the file that a friend in the police station had managed to obtain for me. We set out the photocopied diagrams and photographs on the blanket, weighing each down under pebbles and stones. Ginger scampered back to the van, excited.

  He came back a few minutes later with the Useful Box on a sack barrow, and a few other bears to help him. The box was the size of a jumbo coffin, or maybe a small phone box. It was sturdy plastic and well secured with bungee ropes. The box flopped onto the ground with a thud that almost brought the cliff down. Ginger seemed pretty pleased with this as he dusted his hands on a hanky.

  “So what do we need?” He asked. “Laser thingies, measuring whatsits, or a flame thrower?”

  “Inflatable Dead Person, over there.” Tiger directed.

  “We don't have a flame thrower in that do we?” I asked as calmly as I could manage.

  “No.” Ginger said, a few seconds too late to be convincing.

  The Inflatable Dead Person was an inflatable Father Christmas from a cheap outlet store. It had been well patched, but was made from pretty hefty plastic and designed to resist some considerable rough and tumble. He had clearly been designed by somebody who had never seen Santa but had done a lot of research into the body mass required for carrying a toy for every boy, girl and bear on the planet. He was buff, with a disturbingly trapezoid torso and bulging arms along with a well groomed beard.

  I had the bears lay Santa so he aligned as best as we could manage with how Pamela Stoke had been found, a few weeks before. His limbs were not in the right position, but he gave the general idea. Next the bears leant into the box and pulled out foil windmills on long dowels that would mark each of the other clues the police had found. Her phone (broken), handbag, lipstick, a brick with her blood on (that matched the injury to the back of her head), and her coffee cup.

  We stood around and looked at the reports.

  “So she drove here. Parked at the top of the steps and walked along the beach.” I said.

  “Yep.” The bears agreed. And “yup.” And “Seems that way.”

  “She was killed with a single blow to the back of the head, by somebody very tall and very strong.” Tiger read from one of the reports.

  “So he must have taken her by surprise.” One of the other bears deduced, wiping her nose on a football scarf she wore around her neck. “Or she.” The bear corrected herself.

  “It would have to be very surprising.” I said. Tiger looked at me, her nose wrinkled in thought. “What is missing from these pictures.” I hinted for her.

  “Her keys?” Ginger said. “No car keys in her handbag, or anywhere.”

  “No footprints.” Tiger whispered.

  “Ooh” Said the bears.

  “The tide washed them away?” Ginger asked. “No, wait, the groyne has a high tide mark on it. No waves all the way up here.” He pointed at a bird. “Maybe a magpie dropped the brick on her and stole her car keys.” He gave it way too much thought. “But it left the car here as he couldn't reach the pedals!” He rubbed his chin. “It is a convertible.” He added, as though that was an important point.

  “Where did the brick come from?” I asked, staring at the bird that was still in the sky. It landed on a fence post by the cliff and watched us.

  “Mister Magpie.” The Bears said in unison, touching a finger to their bobble hats.

  “One for sorrow.” I muttered.

  “Pardon?” Tiger looked up at me.

  “One for sorrow.” I said. “An old tradition w
ith magpies. Like counting cherry stones.”

  “Oh yeah.” Ginger nodded. “I love that!”

  Clogs clicked in my head and I grinned. Go on, admit it. You beat me to it. Tiger realised what I meant. She looked at me, followed my gaze up to the bird on the cliff and nodded enthusiastically.

  “What?” Ginger asked, but the we were already running back towards the car park.

  *

  The rest of the bears, or at least the rest of those who had come with us, waited at the foot of the the cliff as I went for a hurried walk with Ginger and Tiger. At the car park we took the public footpath that would take us up the cliffs, through the barley fields and the scattered old trees, to the squat, fortified, surprisingly bland little church with the drab walls of buff stone and the Azrael coat of arms over the door. I looked around. There was a old wall around a pitch of land that surrounded the church. It was crusted moss and other life forms, the brickwork crumbling. One section had collapsed. No, it had been pulled down, the bricks were scratched and the mound of earth behind the wall had spilled down into the grass.

  “So, seems the attacker was not so much tall,” Tiger concluded, “and more of a very good shot.”

  “Seems like somebody heard the not so good news.” Ginger said. “Sorry.” He added a few seconds later.

  “Let's see if we can find her car keys.” I suggested.

  “Can I go look in the church?” Ginger said. “It looks open.”

  “Okay.” I said, busy looking around for any sign of the missing car keys. “But no fire!” I shouted after him. He waved a dismissive paw at me.

  “So one for sorrow?” Tiger asked. “Two for...?”

  “Joy.” I said. “Three for a girl. Four for a boy.” I looked up. There was a second bird looking at me from the fence, where it sat with the first. “Then silver. Then Gold. A secret never to be...” I grinned and snatched something shiny from the tree. “Keys for an expensive convertible.”