London, July 1977
The light from the projector flickered over the
occupants of the viewing room; the red velvet plush seats now stained claret
and the bodies lying strewn around—a trio of broken dolls. Blood trickled from
their faces, hands frozen in claws, trousers sodden with piss, mouths open in
silent screams. A fourth figure sat huddled in the corner nearest the door,
rocking himself, froth speckling his lips, as he muttered the Lord’s Prayer.
The silvery projection light illuminated his scalp, partly bald where he’d torn
out his own hair only minutes earlier.
Arthur
Kincaid, film producer at Pinewood Studios, never again returned to his former
job, or home or remembered his name or those of his nearest and dearest. When
the paramedics arrived, phoned by the building’s receptionist after she
couldn’t gain entry through the locked door to Viewing Room 4, Kincaid muttered
the same words again and again - ‘He’s coming. He’s coming for you.’
The
film reel which was sitting in the old-fashioned projector was packed away and
stored by the police for evidence and a possible trial. However, it was
concluded the three other men had committed suicide and Arthur Kincaid was
judged insane, so the reels were shipped to Kincaid’s solicitors, as his had
been the name on the booking label.
There
had been no need to watch the film. No one was that interested anyway. It was
only a movie and it had nothing to do with the horrific tragedies, did it?
London, current day
Jimmy flourished the letter at the dinner table.
‘It’s from Sproggins and Sons, that fancy pants solicitors Uncle Arthur
employed. Remember?’ he asked Ivy, his sister, who calmly continued spreading
home-made marmalade on toast, methodically covering the edges.
‘Not
really,’ Ivy replied.
‘Uncle
Arthur’s finally popped his clogs, in that mad house he lived in . . .’
‘Home
for the Mentally Ill,’ Ivy reproved her brother, but smiled as she did so.
‘Yeah,
whatever, sis. He was off his head. Anyway, he’s left me everything. Sole surviving
male heir. Nothing for you—guess Uncle Arthur wasn’t into gender equality! I
get his house, his car—hey, didn’t he have a Rolls back in the day? When he
worked at Pinewood? The house contents and ‘other possessions held in care by
ourselves’ - old Sproggy-face says here. What do you think they might be?
Diamonds? Gold sovereigns? I mean Uncle Arthur was rolling in it, wasn’t he?
Didn’t he have a hit with that horror film, The Mummy’s Here! The one
with all those female victims who kept losing their clothes along the way?’
Ivy
nodded. ‘Don’t get too excited, Jimmy. Remember the costs of the nursing home.
I expect there won’t be much left now.’
‘What
there is though—it’s all mine!’ Jimmy was jubilant.
Ivy
eyed her younger brother with a blend of tolerance and exasperation.
In
truth the windfall had come at an opportune time for Jimmy’s personal finances,
which were at an all-time low. ‘I’ll go make the appointment with Frogspawn and
son, right this minute.’ Tigger-like he jogged from the dining room.
Ivy
sighed. Jimmy was a handful and she rather hoped he’d move out one day and
leave her to her own life, but he showed no sign of that. She ate another piece
of toast, nibbling precisely from the crust inwards.
***
Roger
Sproggin, the current and only surviving Sproggin solicitor, welcomed Jimmy
Kincaid into a leather upholstered chair. He noticed his new client’s
eagerness, his scuffed shoes, casual attire, scruffy four-day beard growth and
chewed fingernails. He’d get straight to the business of the will, for he
sensed this particular client wouldn’t sit still for long preambles.
‘Your
paternal Uncle, has left you—‘
Jimmy
cut in, tapping his feet. ‘Yes, yes, I know he has, but how much?’
Sproggin Jnr., barely flickered an eyelid. ‘Well, with the sale of the house,
the car, the contents . . .’ The solicitor named a figure which equated to a
moderate lottery win.
Jimmy
couldn’t believe what he was hearing. He wanted to do a victory jig and drink
whiskey. He barely listened to the rest of the legal eagle’s spiel.
‘ . . .
then there are, of course, the film reels we’ve been holding since the police
investigation . . .’
‘What?’
Jimmy refocussed.
‘Well,
after the terrible incident which led to your uncle’s sectioning . . .’
‘Right,
yes, when he went off his trolley,’ said Jimmy.
Sproggins
shuddered at the indelicacy and chose to ignore it. ‘We have the film reels the
deceased was watching on that evening in our possession, stored and untouched.’
‘Right,
OK, well I’ll take them too. They might be worth something on eBay to an old
movie buff.’
Sproggins
buzzed for his secretary and tasked her with bringing up the Kincaid boxes.
‘Coffee?’ he asked, ‘while we wait.’
Jimmy nodded and strolled to the
window. His head was awash with ideas—he could now buy a house in London,
instead of giving his sister rent money. He could wear suits like his Uncle
used to have, buy a decent car or cars, travel abroad. He didn’t notice the
view from the window. The vistas inside his head were overwhelming.
‘A word
of caution, Mr Kincaid, if I may be so bold.’ Sproggins hovered over the silver
coffee pot. ‘No one has unpacked the film reels since that summer evening in
1977 or watched them, well, not to my knowledge. Call me superstitious, but who
knows what is on them?’
Jimmy
turned around in irritation. What’s the annoying legal eagle drivelling on
about? Then the penny dropped. ‘Do you mean whatever’s on those reels might
have been linked to the deaths? And to Uncle Arthur going loopy? But those men
committed suicide.’
‘Yes,
that is correct. Three men died by their own hand that evening, after locking
the door. To keep what inside the room with them? I’ve often wondered. They all
died horribly, Mr Kincaid, tearing out their own eyeballs and hair. It was a
nightmare scene for the officers and medics. Blood everywhere. Your uncle never
could explain what had happened. Please don’t underestimate the tragedy of it.
My father spoke of it often over the years to me. He was deeply shocked and he
used to visit your uncle too.’
Jimmy
shrugged. ‘It was all a long time ago now. Half a century. Water under the
bridge. No one cares now.’
A knock
at the door ushered in four large cardboard boxes. Jimmy made arrangements for
them to be sent to Ivy’s address and left, heading for the nearest bar to spend
some of the advance on his inheritance, provided by a tight-lipped Sproggins.
Jimmy’s
celebrating turned into an all-nighter, segueing to a nightclub and a
stagger-home, with a lucky lady companion in tow, in the early hours. When the
lubricated pair got back to Ivy’s they both nearly tripped over the boxes
standing in the hallway.
‘Bloody
hell, darling, you moving in or out?’ The redhead rubbed her shins and
clambered over the obstacle course, on her way to the stairs.
‘Just
part of my inheritance,’ Jimmy slurred, waving his hand at the boxes.
The
redhead sighed. She’d heard of nothing else all evening. Time for some bedroom
action now, she reckoned. She beckoned Jimmy to follow her up the stairs.
And, of
course, he did.
***
The
next morning Ivy had moved the boxes, cleaned the hallway and deposited the
boxes’ contents in the living room, where they sat as reminders of Uncle
Arthur’s brief, but glorious, producing career. There were metal canisters,
containing a handful of reels, a projector, folders of tatty paperwork and a
small locked briefcase.
Jimmy
slouched downstairs, pouchy-eyed and pale-skinned, long after 2 p.m. The
redhead, he assumed had long gone, leaving her number and her knickers under
his pillow.
‘Thanks,
sis,’ he muttered and drank two mugs of coffee to kick-start his day.
‘Do you
think this might be one of Uncle Arthur’s own films?’ Ivy was touching the
spools and peering at the brown-stained papers.
‘Dunno,
just don’t break anything in case I decide to flog it later on.’ Jimmy pulled the
locked briefcase towards him, and shook it. ‘Something’s moving around inside.’
His eyes lit up at the thought of more loot.
‘This
projector will still work, I think,’ Ivy, always the practical one of the
siblings, commented, as she examined the old-fashioned equipment. ‘I could ask
Mal.’ She coloured at the mention of the name.
Jimmy
rolled his eyes. ‘Yeah, right, why don’t you ask dear sweet Malcolm?’
Ivy
went pinker. ‘He is chairman of the
. . .’
‘ .
. .
I know, I know, the Little Horton Photography and Film Society.’ Jimmy
finished the sentence. He’d heard a lot lately about this particular group and
about its sterling chairman and founder. ‘OK, ask Mal over later. He might be
useful. Does he have a pretty friend for me?’
Ivy
still pink-cheeked, giggled, but stood up and headed for the phone. She had
hopes for Malcolm and this could just be the lure to facilitate a closer
relationship.
***
Later
that day, Jimmy went out, to buy ‘gear’, as he called it, and avoided his
sister’s eye. She wasn’t sure whether if it was clothes, cars or drugs he was
buying, and she realised, she didn’t really want to know. Trying to save Jimmy
from himself and his habits was becoming tedious and soul destroying. She was
glad of the peace which settled over her tiny maisonette when he’d gone out.
Even Tazzy, the tortoiseshell rescue cat deemed it safe to make an appearance
now Jimmy wasn’t there.
Ivy
settled down, with the cat at her feet and coffee mug in hand, to read the
crinkly and stained papers resting inside the manila folders. There were
several different documents, she discovered stored together at random—a red
leather-bound diary, pages from a film script, with the title typed on the
front page, Midnight’s Terror, a few faded black and white photographs
and a rusted paper-clip which secured a wedge of cuttings from some British
newspapers, all from the 1920s and 1930s.
Odd,
she thought, it’s as though someone’s deliberately collected these documents
together. But why? And who?
Ivy enjoyed a mystery
and her history degree had involved much enjoyable archival research, so she
rather relished the task before her. She dug deep into the papers, but for
every question answered, another sprang up in its place. Also the more she
read, the more uneasy she became. There was a real puzzle here, she realised,
but also the hints of something more, something really
About the author
Alyson's work has been published online, in many anthologies - Space and Time, Under Her Skin and Musings of the Muses from Brigids Gate Press. Her work has been read on BBC Radio, and several podcasts.
She lives in the UK with her family, and her rescue dog, Roxy.
