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  Martin Vaizey nodded, as if Amelia had already told him that the reason for her refusal was partly personal. ‘She also said that what you were asking her to do sounded dangerous.’

  I raised an eyebrow. ‘Dangerous? Is that what she said?’

  ‘Mr Erskine … all spirit contact is dangerous, to a greater or less extent. Even you should know that.’

  ‘Well with this particular case, with Naomi Greenberg, I guess there could be some kind of minor risk involved. But as you say, there’s always a risk, pretty much, when you contact the spirits. I mean, they’re not all cheerful, well-meaning souls, are they?’

  Martin Vaizey took a long, patient breath. ‘I am not an amateur, Mr Erskine. I have seen and talked to spirits that would astonish you; and I have been seeing them and talking to them for nearly forty years.’

  He poured himself a glass of passion-fruit crush. He didn’t offer any to me — not that I wanted any. I guess that proved he was psychically sensitive, after all.

  ‘Let me tell you a little about myself, Mr Erskine. I first discovered that I was a sensitive when I was only five years old. My ten-year-old brother Samuel died of pneumonia the day before my fifth birthday. But — even after his funeral — I continued to see him in his room, and talk to him.

  ‘Our relationship continued for years, and each time he appeared his image became clearer, until it was hard to tell that I wasn’t speaking to a real boy. Only the faint images of the bedside light that shone right through his body showed that he was a spirit.

  ‘Samuel introduced me to scores of other spirits, some of them clear, some very faint — some so old that they were nothing more than creaking voices in the darkness. He showed me a world that exists beyond death; what you might call the landscape of immortality. It’s very desolate sometimes, but at other times it’s very beautiful — almost picture-postcard beautiful. The sort of heaven that over-enthusiastic young Catholic girls like to imagine. It’s always strange.

  ‘I wasn’t often afraid; although some of the very old voices were quite sinister. I wasn’t afraid of my brother, of course, because he never grew older than ten, and he visited me nearly every day. One evening my father caught me talking to him in my room. Samuel vanished, but my father had caught the briefest glimpse of him. It nearly drove my father insane, but when I explained, he began to calm down. I suspect that my father may have been slightly sensitive, too — and that I inherited my sensitivity from him.

  ‘He didn’t say anything else, and he never asked me to get in touch with my brother on his behalf. But he bought me some books on psychic skills and psychic phenomena; and without saying a word he encouraged me to develop my sensitivity, and to learn how to use it with skill, and above all with accuracy. My father believed that whatever natural gifts one had, however arcane, one should stretch them to the utmost.’

  I sat back. I didn’t know whether I believed any of this or not The landscape of immortality? Creaking voices in the darkness?

  ‘You’re sceptical,’ said Martin Vaizey.

  ‘Are you surprised? You’re talking more like me than me.’

  ‘Perhaps I am. But if you really want to know what’s troubling Mrs Greenberg, then I’m sure I can help you. It’s my forté, identifying the spirits that are troubling people, and bringing them into the open. Most of the time, people aren’t aware that spirits are trying to get in touch with them. They feel a sense of irritation, perhaps; or discontent, without even realizing that a spirit in the spirit-world is doing everything it possibly can to attract their attention. For instance, there is a spirit that is troubling you.

  ‘Me?’ I asked him, in disbelief. Now I knew that he was a quack. The only spirit that was troubling me was the chronic lack of a cold dry vodkatini, or maybe a tequila slammer with lots of lime.

  ‘I noticed it when you came along the corridor,’ smiled Martin Vaizey. ‘You have a spirit who walks close behind your right shoulder. He is always there, always close. He is trying to protect you and also to attract your attention, both at once. He is trying to warn you, too, if I’m not mistaken.’

  I whipped my head around. All I could see was the headless legless torso of a bronze nude with a pretty sizeable pair of gazongas, and a fussy arrangement of blue irises.

  I grunted in amusement, licked my finger, and chalked up a mark in the air. ‘All right. One to you. You made me look.’

  ‘Of course I made you look. Don’t you believe that there’s anybody there?’

  I was about to say oh, for sure, like hell I do when something stopped me. It wasn’t just natural bet-hedging, either. I looked into Martin Vaizey’s eyes and I saw such clarity and focus and sheer self-confidence that I almost began to think that he might have seen somebody walking behind me; that he might be able to see somebody, even now.

  ‘Don’t you want to know who it is?’ he asked me.

  ‘Can’t you tell me?’

  ‘Of course not,’ he smiled. ‘How should I know who it is?’

  ‘Can’t you ask him? It? Whatever it is?’

  ‘I can do better than that.’

  He finished his drink, then shifted himself forward on the white hide sofa until he could reach the stack of art books on the glass-topped coffee-table. The top book was The Art Of Velazquez, with a reproduction on the front cover of Philip IV in his field marshal’s uniform. Martin Vaizey said, ‘Here, lay your right hand flat on top of this book. That’s right. Now, I’ll lay my hand on top of yours.’

  I pressed my hand against the glossy book-jacket. I was still quite warm and sweaty and I could feel my fingers sticking to it. Martin Vaizey laid his hand flat on top of mine and his fingers were very cool and dry.

  ‘What are we doing this for?’ I asked him.

  He kept glancing over my right shoulder, which I found quite irritating. ‘Whatever spirit is following you … I’m inducing it to make its face known to you. We have to work together, all three of us. I don’t know what the face looks like, you don’t have the capability of recreating it in the real world, and the spirit can’t make an appearance without our help. It’s like moulding a Hallowe’en mask out of plastic. Your hand is the mould, my hand is the injector pump, and the spirit is the plastic.’

  ‘What makes me think you’ve used that analogy before?’ I asked him.

  His eyes flickered. ‘I have used it before, yes. In fact, I’ve used it many times. But it’s an accurate analogy.’

  We sat there, face to face, hand over hand, for what felt like quarter of an hour, but was probably no longer than three or four minutes. I was beginning to feel stiff-backed and uncomfortable, and I was sure that my sweaty hand was cockling the jacket of his expensive art book. I looked at Martin Vaizey, but he wasn’t really looking back at me. I looked at the crab’s claws painting on the wall behind him. I listened to the whispering whirr of the air-conditioning, and the constant grumbling of the traffic outside. An elevator whined — stopped — then whined again.

  Martin Vaizey suddenly exclaimed, ‘Spirit!’

  ‘What?’ I jumped.

  ‘I’m addressing the spirit, not you,’ he snapped at me.

  ‘Oh I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I didn’t realize.’

  ‘Spirit,’ he went on, ‘take hold of my hand, let me lead you out of your formlessness. Be not afraid, o spirit, for we will protect and guide you. Show yourself, spirit, that we may know you.’

  There was another lengthy silence. But, sceptical as I was, I began to feel that there really was somebody standing behind me. Maybe it was the way that Martin Vaizey kept glancing over my shoulder. If somebody keeps on glancing over your shoulder, in the end you have to start believing that there could be somebody there. It’s the same as staring at people’s shoes as they pass you in the street. They almost always lift their feet up to see if they’ve stepped in something.

  ‘Spirit, we know that you are trying to speak to us. Show yourself, spirit, take my hand. We will guard you and keep you, have no fear.’

  M
aybe the sun had been covered by a cloud, as well as smog. But by scarcely-perceptible degrees the whole apartment darkened, and the air began to smell different, fresh but highly-charged, like ozone. I felt a deep sonic resonance, no louder than the dying vibrations of the lowest tuning-fork; but a resonance all the same. There was a feeling that time had shifted; that the room had changed; that there was somebody else here.

  ‘Spirit, show yourself,’ whispered Martin Vaizey. ‘We are friends and protectors, we mean you no ill.’

  We waited. The apartment grew darker still. A small prissy clock in the hallway chimed four. Ning, ning, ning, ning. I raised my eyes and looked at Martin Vaizey with growing impatience.

  It was then that I felt a totally cold hand on my right shoulder. A hand that pressed against me for the briefest of seconds, as if a dead man were standing right behind me and were trying to attract my attention.

  Instantly I turned round, almost ricking my neck in the process. There was nobody there. Only the well-developed torso. Only the irises. Icy — fingers — trailing — down — back.

  I turned back to Martin Vaizey and said, ‘What —?’ but he lifted an admonishing finger and said, ‘Wait, quiet! It’s now! It’s happening now!’

  A numbingly cold sensation passed down the entire length of my right arm, from shoulder to wrist, as if all my veins were being gradually filled with liquid oxygen. I was already suffering from tennis elbow — not from playing tennis, but from paint-rollering the ceiling of my office — and I grunted ‘Unh!’ out loud as the coldness flooded down to my forearm.

  ‘Please — don’t be afraid,’ Martin Vaizey told me. ‘All spirits are cold. They have no need of body-warmth, after all.’

  I winced and nodded, trying to feel reassured, even though a spirit with no body-warmth whatsoever had just flowed down my arm and turned my work-strained tendons into strings of icy-cold agony.

  I felt my fingers fill up with cold. And then immediately I felt an extraordinary sensation that made me catch my breath, and prickled up the hairs on the back of my neck. The book-jacket seemed to be rising up in my palm, filling with hand with contours and bumps. The book-jacket was taking on a shape. An oval shape. A nose shape. A chin shape. A mouth shape.

  My hand wasn’t pressed against a flat book-cover any more. It was pressed against a man’s face.

  Five

  I tried to snatch my hand away, but Martin Vaizey wouldn’t let me go. He pressed his hand down harder and harder and there was nothing I could do but wait for the lumps on the book to rise higher and higher, and with every rising second to feel more like a cold, soft human face.

  I tried to struggle free for a second time, but Martin Vaizey said, ‘No! Please! Not yet! You could hurt him!’

  I was helpless. I certainly didn’t want to hurt the face that had formed inside my hand; but much more critical than that was the fact that Martin Vaizey was so much heavier and stronger than me, and I simply couldn’t tug myself free.

  At last, the rising process appeared to have stopped. But I could still feel this chilled living face filling the palm of my hand. Worse than that, I could feel his eyelashes flickering against my skin. Even worse than that, I was sure that I could feel him breathing — thin, steady breaths against my heart-line.

  ‘All right,’ breathed Martin Vaizey. ‘You can take your hand away now. He’s ready. Come on, take your hand away.’

  Carefully, cautiously, I lifted my hand from the book.

  ‘There,’ said Martin Vaizey, his voice soft with triumph.

  ‘Jesus,’ I whispered.

  The cover had formed itself into the shape of a human face, a man’s face, with a short straight nose and a sharp-cut mouth and a severe-looking forehead. It was impossible to tell whether the man was black or white, because his features stood out in relief from Velazquez’ painting of Philip IV. His cheeks were tattooed with the orange silk and lace of Philip’s field marshal’s uniform, his chin bearded with Philip’s black triangular hat, his right eye covered by Philip’s pale featureless Habsburg face.

  What made the apparition so incredible, though, was the fact that it was breathing; that its eyes were open; that it was moving its lips.

  ‘Spirit, can you hear me?’ asked Martin Vaizey, leaning over it.

  I heard a fluffing noise like wind blowing across a microphone; like beech-trees rustling; like dune-grass seething with fine grey sand. And then a voice, blurred and small, the voice of a man speaking over unimaginable distances.

  ‘… couldn’t drive you back … they couldn’t …’

  ‘What’s he saying?’ I asked Martin Vaizey, in sheer fright. ‘Who the hell is he?’

  ‘I thought you could tell me that,’ said Martin Vaizey. ‘I never saw him before in the whole of my life.’

  ‘He’s just a book!’ I almost screamed at him. ‘He can’t talk, for Christ’s sake! He’s just a book!’

  ‘Mr Erskine, please — I thought I’d explained. What you’re seeing is a simply a death-mask. Unlike your usual kind of death-mask, however, it’s taken from a man’s immortal spirit, rather than his dead flesh, which is why it can move and breathe and speak. I used the book because it was convenient, that’s all. We could just as easily have molded his face on the wall, or on the table, or on the floor.’

  ‘So this isn’t his real face, just a replica?’

  ‘Well, it is and it isn’t. Usually, a spirit is everywhere and nowhere. It just happens that, right now, we’ve arranged for this spirit’s facial likeness to appear on this book.’

  ssshhhhh … ‘… little too late … didn’t understand that you can’t use spirits to fight against spiritless men …so now they’re going to … every place where … not a trace of … nothing left … until they have it all back … all of it … the way it was before …’ … ssshhhhh —

  Although I was still upset — and although I wasn’t at all just how dangerous this death-mask might be — I gingerly leaned a little closer. It was unnerving to watch Philip IV’s orange silk uniform rippling like real material as the death-mask breathed and spoke, and to watch Philip’s miniature face bobbing up and down with every twitch of the death-mask’s eyelid.

  ‘You’re sure you don’t recognize him?’ asked Martin Vaizey. ‘It must be somebody you’ve met, somebody whose face you remember, otherwise we couldn’t have created this manifestation.’

  ‘I don’t know … it’s kind of difficult to tell, with that blotchy painting all over his face.’

  sssshhhhh … ‘… warned you … warned you … now they’re going to purge the whole … now they’re going to drag you all down … everything …’ … sssshhhh —

  ‘He’s very distressed, don’t you think?’ Martin Vaizey remarked. ‘It sounds like he’s trying to tell you that somebody’s out to get their revenge. And a pretty radical revenge, at that. “Nothing left — they’re going to drag you all down — not a trace.” That sounds like radical revenge to me.’

  ‘Okay if I touch the book?’ I asked him.

  ‘Sure, you can do what you want with it. You can even read it, if you like.’

  ‘Okay if I turn it around?’

  ‘Go ahead, do what you like.’

  I reached out and touched the spine of the book with my fingertips. I don’t know what I was expecting. Maybe I thought that the face would suddenly turn around and bite my fingers. But instead, all I felt was a soft electric chill.

  Carefully, I swivelled the book around, so that I could examine the face from all angles. All the time, it kept on whispering, but its voice was so faint that it was impossible to make any sense out of it.

  ‘Do you have any enemies?’ asked Martin Vaizey seriously. ‘Anybody who might want to hurt you?’

  I shook my head. ‘Maybe a couple of husbands who got the idea that my consultations were more than just palm reading. I should be so lucky. My prettiest client looks like Bette Midler’s twin brother.’

  ‘This is a great deal more serious than anything like
that,’ said Martin Vaizey. ‘This spirit is very deeply troubled. In fact, I can’t remember seeing a spirit so anxious, not in twenty years.’

  The whispering went on and on. ‘… whatever you do … remember what he promised … remember what he promised … even outside …’

  ‘Did anybody promise you anything?’ Martin Vaizey asked me.

  ‘I don’t know. My landlord promised to kick me out if I didn’t settle the rent. But that’s about all.’

  Suddenly, the whispering voice said ‘… not in this world … not in this world … rock, don’t you remember … have you hidden it so well? … stored it in mudballs … ing rock … don’t you …’

  I stared at the face in rising horror and disbelief. I thought: no, not again. Not any more. I couldn’t take another experience like that. Once in a lifetime was more than enough; twice almost drove me crazy. Not again, God. Don’t tangle me up in all this stuff again.

  Martin Vaizey was watching me acutely. ‘You know who it is, don’t you?’ he said. You’ve suddenly remembered who it is!’

  I stood up, wiping the palms of my hands against my pants. ‘Listen, Mr Vaizey, I’m beginning to think that maybe this little experiment was kind of a mistake. If you could just … get rid of that face?’

  ‘You came here asking for help,’ said Martin Vaizey.

  ‘Well, yes, you’re right. But that’s all to do with Mrs Greenberg and Mrs Greenberg’s furniture. Nothing to do with this.’

  ‘You don’t think so?’

  ‘I know so. This — this face here is something to do with my past. Something that I got myself involved in, years ago. This is my ghost, not Naomi Greenberg’s. I don’t know why it should still be following me around.’

  ‘Mr Erskine, it’s following you around because you’re involved in some kind of psychic struggle. It’s not trying to warn you about jealous husbands or landlords dunning you for rent It’s trying to warn you about something beyond “Not of this world,” that’s what it said. “Not of this world.” And it talked about “outside”. “Outside” is common psychic parlance for the realms of the spirits.’