The House of Lost Souls by F. G. Cottam Page B

hands. It was his belief that whatever lurked in the Fischer house waxed and waned in its power. They must have gone there at a time when it was very powerful, the ethics professor and his hapless band of undergraduates.
    Mason returned, carrying a double. Seaton sipped it. It was Bushmills whisky, and it tasted like the twelve-year-old.
    ‘Who’s Covey?’
    ‘He didn’t tell you?’
    ‘Told me some bollocks about an institute for psychic research.’
    ‘It isn’t bollocks.’
    ‘Maybe not. For all I know, he qualifies for lottery funding. But you’re not who you say you are.’
    ‘No,’ Seaton said. He sipped whisky. It tasted good, seductive. It tasted of home.
    ‘There’s something else I should tell you,’ Mason said. ‘I said I heard “Imagine” on the radio. And I did. Or I thought I did. Because it didn’t really sound like Lennon. But it didn’t really sound like a cover version, either. What it actually sounded like, was a pastiche.’ He shrugged. It was an easy song, after all, to mock. ‘This is probably nothing.’
    ‘Tell me anyway.’
    Rain howled in the wind around the pub and the sea in its waves was a ragged chorus. The overhead lamps, deliberately dim, flickered. Seaton thought he could smell tar from the timber planking lining the walls. He thought, Jesus. This close to the sea . And there was a tremor in his hand he could not conceal when he raised his whisky glass to his lips.
    ‘It didn’t sound like Lennon playing the piano,’ Mason said. He drew on his cigarette. ‘When I was a boy, my dad had a real thing for primitive jazz. He liked the classic, early-twentieth-century stuff. King Oliver. Louis Armstrong. He was crazy about Fats Waller. He drove us mad, playing all these rags and romps from New Orleans. That’s what Lennon’s playing sounded like, last night. Black, barrelhouse music. Stride piano. It had the lilt and echo of the whorehouse.’
    Seaton downed the remainder of his drink. This time the tremor left him alone. The Bushmills had accomplished its task. He endured the heartfelt fantasy then of reaching into his pocket for Covey’s money and buying the bottle from the landlord. The remainder of the bottle. Or a fresh bottle. Ah, Christ, why not the balance of the bottle opened and a fresh one, too? Why not a grand night over a full case of Bushmills? He had plenty of cash now. Twelve burnished amber bottles, filled to their necks with peaty oblivion. It was a powerfully seductive thought, as filled with foreboding and self-pity as he’d allowed himself to become, as thirsty for escape as he was, and solace. Instead, he got to his feet and said to Mason, ‘I’d like to see your sister now. If I may.’
     

    A fire of pine logs burned in the grate in the girl’s room. The room was on the top of the three floors of the house. The resin from the burning logs gave the room a sweet scent. Out of the window, the havoc of the sea below was black and white, flecked under a turbulent sky. Now and then the old panes rattled in their frames, in the two windows, made fretful by the wind. The house was wooden and it groaned at the weather, and wind whistled and sighed through the attic space above them. There were fresh flowers in two vases in the room and it was cheerfully lit by bright little lamps with cloth shades in primary colours. The nurse was a plump-cheeked girl in a starched agency uniform who looked tranquil, untroubled by the one, apparently undemanding patient under her charge. Seaton felt uncomfortable in the room. He could smell cigarette smoke on his clothes from the pub and smoke and beer on Nick Mason’s breath as the two men stood at the foot of Sarah Mason’s bed and studied her. They were wet from the rain on the walk back along the sea wall and it was so quiet in the room that Seaton could hear rain drip from the hem of his waterproof on to the lilac painted floorboards. It was still a little girl’s bedroom, this.
    Its occupant was asleep. It was