“Bloody hell,” Paul says, his hands shivering in front of the car’s poxy heater. “I mean… bloody hell.”
Sandra says nothing, just stares at raindrops forming on the window. Silently, though, she agrees with Paul. Bloody hell.
“That weren’t what I were expecting,” Paul continues, needing to talk it out rather than let the thoughts coagulate in his mind. “I knew it would be violent, Hoped it would be, maybe. I never expected…” Another shudder goes through him and he turns to Sandra. “Did you think it would be like that?”
Sandra hadn’t expected anything but another cold night and five wasted hours. Ghost hunting was Paul’s thing, or had been. Now it was theirs.
“I’m going to watch it again,” Sandra says, rearranging the camcorder and monitor on her lap. Paul nods and shuffles over to see. The screen is a modern portable LCD, while the Hi8 camcorder is vintage, some thirty years old. Their work, which depends so much on nuance and sensitivity, cannot be captured in the unambiguous ones and zeroes of digital high definition. Fuzz and noise was so much better for selective interpretation. Each burst of static could be something supernatural if you wanted it to.
Sandra operates the camcorder’s buttons and spools tape to the timecode she already knows by heart. When 00:42:35 comes up on the display, she presses play so Sandra and Paul can watch their previous selves.
The camera work is shaky and flicks from point to point without any clear sense. Sandra is not a natural cinematographer and the old technology doesn’t make things any better. The low-resolution sensor is starved of light and smears whatever information it can on to tape. Paul narrates as they make their way into what once was the library of Wardley House, giving readings of ambient temperature and electromagnetic activity from the devices he keeps tethered to his belt with a karabiner. Paul isn’t a natural on-camera presence, but his enthusiasm paranormal investigation overcomes his usual taciturn nature.
“Dropped eighteen degrees in three seconds,” Paul gasps, condensation carrying his words.
Sandra had just been about to ask what that meant when it happened.
It.
The taped version of events doesn’t fully capture what happened. As an aide memoire, though, it is unequivocal. Both Sandra and Paul re-live each moment as it plays out on screen. Even though it will be viewed by countless other viewers, none of them will experience it in the same way. Nevertheless, even for those that did not witness it live, it is still quite the piece of cinema.
Two smeared streaks of light enter the room, one racing ahead of the other for a moment until the second, larger shape catches it up. For a moment it appears that they have merged, but their collective form falls to the floor in a tangled mess, with each half pulling and pushing in different directions. Some definition appears and there is a struggle of limbs until the larger form wrestles itself to a position of dominance, on top of the other. The camera zooms in, loses focus for a moment then swims in and out as it tries to gain a lock on something that both is and isn’t there. The video’s soundtrack has nothing but Paul and Sandra’s rapid breathing, but both of them remember the struggling noises, the shouts of protest, the cries for help.
On screen, the larger shape takes control of the smaller. What appear to be hands reach, grabbing and smashing another form against the ground, over and over again. The audio is still almost silence, but both Paul and Sandra shiver as they re-live the sickly crunching noises they heard as the larger form beats the smaller into the ground. It is almost a full minute until the struggle is over. The smaller form remains visible on the ground, but there is no more anima. No energy. No life, if it ever had such a thing.
Meanwhile, the larger form expands and contracts. Expands and contracts. Breathing heavily, perhaps from the exertion or perhaps from anguish as it realises what is has done.
Sandra and Paul don’t speak, either on the tape or as viewers, until the forms evaporate into nothingness and there is nothing but ill-lit video of an empty room.
Paul takes a deep breath.
“Bloody hell,” he whispers. “Bloody hell.”
• • •
It takes about eight days for the tape to become just a piece of footage to Sandra and Paul. Once home, they go through it exhaustively, logging each and every detail contained within. Every frame is captured onto the computer, analysed and annotated. Each moment of sound is filtered, EQ’d and tweaked to expose each and every frequency contained within. Their own reactions have been written, recorded and edited together in order to transform two minutes of footage has thereby been expanded into a fifteen minute that will maximise ad revenue. After a week, they have 250,000 views.
Sandra, while doing her best to help this process, is a little afraid of what it’s doing to Paul. It’s not the same as the pure terror she felt at Wardley House, but there is growing unease about what this is doing to Paul. He’s barely slept over the past week, constantly refreshing Youtube metrics and tweaking keywords for maximum exposure. While Sandra views what happened as a side-road on their continuing journey together, Paul believes it is a destination. For him, it the video validates a lifetime’s work, one that has been mocked and derided by people around him. It’s not just a hobby, and it’s not a diversion. It’s a calling. Sandra may not like it, but they’re together so she’s on board. If that means gently encouraging him to eat, sleep and have a bath, then that’s what she’ll do. Occasionally, Paul will even agree and for a brief spell, things are almost normal again. She starts to make plans. Once this has all died down, they can get on with their real lives. She thinks about their jobs, perhaps moving to a different area, maybe even starting a family.
Then the email comes. The producer of an American cable show has seen the video and wants to send a crew to interview them.
“This is it,” Paul murmurs to himself as he reads the message again and again. “This is where it all starts happening.”
“That’s great, Paul,” Sandra says. “I’m pleased for you.”
Paul turns, looking quizzical but then smiling genuinely for the first time in days.
“Pleased for us, babe. This is our thing. Yours and mine.”
It isn’t. Not really. But Sandra thinks it’s nice of him to say it.
Although Paul is worried that the “yanks will swoop in and take the blummin’ thing”, he sees a future stretching out in front of him, one as a professional paranormal investigator, rather than a part-time amateur who works at the Tyre Centre. He sees a book, a web series, maybe more stuff on telly. This segment on Unexplainable will be the springboard for a small empire bearing his name.
The cameras come - large, pro-quality bits of kit, shooting on memory cards instead of tapes and using lenses costing tens of thousands of dollars. But while the camera sees all, it doesn’t naturally gravitate to Paul. The producers find him gruff and incomprehensible. The camera dispassionately highlights his chubbiness and his excess perspiration. But everyone loves Sandra, whose slight distance from things makes her a more natural conduit for believers and skeptics alike. Where Paul has a tendency towards long monologues of technical waffle, Sandra speaks in pithy soundbites that work well in the edit. She also takes direction better than her partner. The segment producer asks them to repeat his questions when they answer. Sandra takes to it. Paul just takes the piss.
By the time they’ve actually got inside Wardley House, the director is talking almost exclusively to Sandra, mentioning Paul’s name only to get him out of the way. Paul responds in a series of increasingly cheery ‘Right you are’s, the timbre of which sounds affable to everyone except Sandra. She doesn’t worry too much about that, though. It’s sort of fun, pretending you’re a famous telly person. She wouldn’t mind doing a bit more of it.
• • •
“Maybe try emphasising each word at the end?” Paul says, fiddling with the new camera’s touchscreen.
Sandra knows what he means, but also knows what it will sound like. Five remote pieces for Unexplainable and another dozen or so for its sister show What Was That? means that she’s familiar with her own cadences. Even without a director - a professional director - she knows what works for her. Still, this was Paul’s video. They agreed on that.
“OK,” she says, breezily. “Gotcha. Ready to go?”
Paul nods. Sandra waits for him to say ‘action’. When it’s clear he won’t, she says “rolling?” and Paul moves his head in a circle.
“I’m here to revisit the scene of one of the most intense paranormal experiences I’ve ever had. This is Wardley House… one year on.”
“CUT!” Paul barks and his voice echoes off the walls. “What did I say? Enunciate each word.”
“What? Like, ‘This. Is. Wardley. House. One. Year. On.’ Like that?” Sandra’s taking the piss, but Paul either doesn’t know or doesn’t care.
“Yes. Like that. Exactly like that.”
“It sounds weird.:
“Just fucking do it, would you?”
Sandra bites her lip and nods. Paul starts the camera rolling again.
“Take two. Go.”
“I still think we should clear this with Steven.”
Paul lets out a long sigh.
“For the thousandth time-“ he begins.
“I just don’t think the show would like it,” Sandra says.
“And I’m telling you it’s not a problem.”
“I signed a contract-”
“Here we go…”
“And there’s non-compete clause that specifically-“
“It’s just a bloody Youtube video!”
“But I’ve got a brand to protect,” Sandra says and it’s this, more than anything, that makes Paul stop talking.
“And how did you get your brand, eh? Why have you got a contract with a bloody ‘non-compete clause’ in it?”
Sandra opens her mouth and then closes it again. Then, calmer, she says:
“I just don’t want to lose my job.”
“Again,” Paul says, eerily calm, “why do you have that job, eh? Because of me. Because of what I spent years researching, years tracking down-“
“Look, I’m sorry that they didn’t use you more in the video. I didn’t ask them for more work, they just offered it me. I can understand you being jealous, but-”
“I’m not jealous,” says Paul.
If Sandra had offered a definite rebuttal, it could have become an argument with back-and-forth, with points being made on either side. But there’s something about the way she clucks her tongue that makes Paul snap. His hands move for her before his brain has time to think, to stop them. Sandra flinches backwards, dropping the mike and turning tail and fleeing into down the corridor. Paul’s not so angry that he flings the camera to the floor, but he shoves it roughly into its case, forgetting to stop it recording. It captures him running after her and everything that follows after that.
“Come back, for fuck’s sake!” Paul bellows, the words echoing off the walls into an indistinct roar. Sandra she tries to make her way through the decrepit rooms of the abandoned stately home, but doesn’t know the layout as well as Paul does. Perhaps if she did, she would find a way to loop round out of his way. She doesn’t decide to go back to where The Incident took place, but as soon as she’s there, she knows it’s a mistake. There’s no way out but the way she came and before she can do anything, Paul is on her. The pair of them fall to the floor. Sandra tries to wriggle out from under him, but he’s on top now. Heavier and stronger, he reaches for her. He still thinks he’s trying to calm her down, to get her to stop being ridiculous, but when he takes hold of her head and shoves the first time, he knows. They both do. She begs him to stop, but he repeats his first action over and over again, proving that it was no accident.
As her skull fractures on the stone floor, Sandra becomes aware of the shapes in the corner of the room. Bright figures, spectral and luminous, indistinct in their details but familiar. She sees them for the witnesses they are, taking testimony for some future date which is now all too near. Sandra speaks a mush of vowels at the smaller of the two shapes, hoping to warn her about what will happen. It’s no good, though. The words are stretched by agony into a long scream that cannot be captured by electronics but will be heard in her head, where it will reverberate faintly until this very moment when it stops permanently, only to be heard and reborn again elsewhere.
Sandra sees it now, how it all words. It all loops round and everything is a circle; perfect, continuous, never-ending, as small as an atom, as large as a star, as simple as a loop or yarn or as complex as a camera lens.
And then it’s over. The circle now complete, goes round for another revolution. But Paul, tired from the exertion, gets his breath back. After murmurs and sobs and regret and shame, he gets up and wipes away his tears.
Unsure what to do next, he looks around for some clue, some indication of his next action. As he does so, he thinks he sees something in the corner of the room, where he he and Sandra stood when all this began.
But as soon as he thinks something’s there, it’s gone.
Just a trick of the light.
“Bloody hell,” Paul mutters. “I mean… bloody hell.”