Babbicam

  Babbicam

  Rod Madocks

  www.hhousebooks.com

  Copyright © 2015 by Rod Madocks

  Author asserts his moral right to be identified as the author of this book. All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. Any characters denoted by government office are entirely fictional and not based on any official, appointed or elected.

  Hardback 978-1-909374-81-2

  Paperback 978-1-909374-82-9

  Epub 978-1-909374-83-6

  Kindle 978-1-909374-76-8

  Cover design by Ken Dawson

  Typeset by handebooks.co.uk

  Published in the USA and UK

  Holland House Books

  Holland House

  47 Greenham Road

  Newbury, Berkshire RG14 7HY

  United Kingdom

  www.hhousebooks.com

  “When you go to bed, don’t leave bread or milk

  on the table: it attracts the dead.”

  R.M. Rilke, Sonnets to Orpheus: Sonnet 6

  One

  Spools

  PROLOGUE

  You can start with those crazy-ass eyes. They’ve got an ‘I’m gonna get you sucka’ look to them. Blue as death and flickering with strabismal menace. You can tell I’ve been looking at his photo for too long. It’s a portrait from about 1911. I’ve had it pinned to my wall for the whole of this last year. Yep, those eyes existed once now they live on through me. They say that the murder vic has the face of their attacker imprinted forever on their dead retinas but what about the perp? John Lee must have contemplated his handiwork in all its blood- bubbling grue. He has the gaze of a soul stealer. One of the court reporters said of him, ‘there is something wrong with the eyes, they are such as you get in asylums.’ Too right, buddy. Even though it’s a monochrome pic you can still see them shining clear and cold as flint. They are beaming out at me, or through me or maybe around me—I’m not too sure. They seem like a portal, a vent down which has passed a goddamn virus download. That mutha John Lee has got inside me, a worm uroboros mining me out. How do you let a ghost crawl into you? By having too many empty spaces inside already, that’s how. It’s not over yet, I don’t think it will ever be over.

  I’d been hanging at a software place in Cudahy. I cut through the back streets looking for the Lake Freeway spur when I noticed that hand-written sign for a yard sale. It was at one of those big old places we call a Polish house. I stopped off, because I’ve always had a thing about junk and found objects. I can’t resist scratching around in cruddy antique shops and boot sales, rooting through old photos and heaps of discarded things. I’m always on the trail, looking for something, I’m not sure what. Actually, correction: that’s what I used to do. I’ve learned now you can pick up more than you bargained for and you might end up with a Pandora’s box type deal.

  There didn’t seem to be much to interest me at first sight. Only some unwanted crockery, worn out electric tools and kids’ crap laid out on tables. I was about to turn away when I scoped a pile of stuff under a table stored in an old cardboard container. Inside was a jumbled heap of dusty documents and old photos, just the kind of trash I liked. I got the whole lot for five dollars after beating them down from a ten.

  I couldn’t wait to dig into it once I got home. I used to get off on that vinegary smell of old papers, evaporated ink, mummified flies and all. There were no warning feelings, none of that premonition stuff. All it seemed to be was a heavy heap of old pictures, an album with newspaper clippings, sheaves of typed record cards of some sort, and lots of small red and yellow boxes that contained mysterious coils of silvery wire.

  Poking around further, I could see at the bottom of the box the aluminum grilles of some sort of obsolete machine. I dragged the thing out. What the hell was it? It looked like some kind of primordial Geiger counter or maybe an ancient adding machine, and had the trade name ‘Webster Chicago’ written on the front in antique lettering. It took some on- line searching before I figured out what it was. I bet you’ve never heard of a wire recorder? No? It’s a gizmo for recording sound. That’s what that moldy lump turned out to be. A wire recorder from 1945, a Webster Chicago Model 80-1 to be exact. It printed sounds magnetically on spools of stainless steel piano wire. I read on the Net how the technology is now totally dead but apparently it flourished in the States in the years following World War Two before tape machines came along.

  My first clue to what was on that machine came in the form of a crumbly booklet mixed up with the stuff in the box. It looked like one of those old dime novels and had a faded, fly-specked title: ‘The Man They Could Not Hang: The Life Story of John Lee, Told by Himself.’ There was a drawing on the front of man with a rope around his neck and a white bag over his head.

  After a while I realized that the voice on the machine was the voice of the guy in the book. Once I’d heard his voice it was too late. Now I know I’m smoked and can never be rid of him. Back then I didn’t know diddly about him and couldn’t think why in hell a half-forgotten English criminal would end up in a backyard vintage recording in Milwaukee. Now I know better. How can you get to unknow stuff? Only by being dead, I guess. Maybe to be possessed in the first place there needs to be a vacuum.

  There sure as hell wasn’t much else happening anyway in my life at the time. I hardly ever left town apart from my yard sale raids. Mostly I stayed in a lot and watched ‘Cops’ on Fox each night. I was living off the last of Grandpa’s money and kept on getting a bunch of rejections from poetry magazines. I suppose all that rooting in yard sales, buying up old photos on eBay and looking for found objects and trash art was a way of me trying to kickstart something in my life. It also seemed a way of distracting myself from the guilt trip that had been dogging me for so long.

  It took a while to get the machine working. The tubes and speaker on the original machine were shot and it needed a 105 volt supply to work properly. I had to dig out some old radio engineers on internet forums to tell me how to fix it up. Some papers in the box showed that the wire recorder had belonged to a Dr Kaiser. There were documents there tying him to the Soldiers Home and the Veterans’ Hospital at Old Main. I spent a deal of time going through Kaiser’s surviving records but mainly I got grabbed by the amazing stuff on those spools. Kaiser must have got the wire recorder originally to modernize his practice, to dictate medical notes and such. Or maybe he just liked gadgets. For some reason he also recorded his patient, John Lee, during the last days of his life. There was an hour of that surprisingly clear voice on each spool.

  I’d never heard anyone speak like Lee. It sure was a weird accent. Real hard to understand his creepy way of speaking. There was another voice on the recordings. A flat Midwestern voice that cut in now and then. It had a sort of indistinguishable accent, a bit like old Walter Cronkite’s. I guessed that voice must have been Doctor Kaiser’s.

  Who was that dude, John Lee anyway? I’d never heard of him. I looked him up on Wiki. He was all tied up in a killing back in 1884. The place the murder happened was called Babbacombe. I had no idea how to pronounce it at first. It’s spelt every which way in all the historical documents but John Lee calls it ‘Babbicam’ and that’s the way I say it. The place still exists. It’s a quiet harbor on the English South Devonshire coast.

  Lee’s story when you got to know it was pretty amazing. He was convicted of murder but kept up a crazy, dogged claim of innocence despite all the evidence dragged up by his enemies and his disloyal kin. Everything was made doubly freaky when Lee
predicted he would not hang—then escaped death on the scaffold after the execution setup would not work for some strange reason. There were all kinds of explanations offered for this.

  It certainly was strange because there’s a simplicity about the hanging block: it all works by gravity. Clunk! Trap door down and you’re dead. In the States we like to kill our bad guys in complicated ways. It’s routine in Texas to take several hours to stick poisons into the arms of killers as they buck and writhe on the gurney or to give extra cycles of juice to some sizzlin’ scumbag in the electric chair. We even have our own low-life who survived the execution chamber like Lee. He’s a sicko child killer from Ohio called Rommel Broom. They couldn’t get the old needle into his coldblooded veins and so he survived. But he isn’t at all as famous as John Lee got to be in his own day. Lee was called ‘The Man They Could Not Hang’ and he was known all over the world. He was the Houdini of the hanging block and he rode his fame for all it was worth. Then, to put a cherry on the cake, after a period of celebrity, he mysteriously disappeared, never to be heard of again. That’s where I come in: these resurrected wire recordings hold the untold story of John Lee. If I had the choice again I’d rather not know it.

  Okay, here it is, you asked for it. It’s a transcription and I have thrown in my raw notes to show you the struggle to find the truth about Lee. I straightened out some of his words but left many in to give you a flavor of his speech. I’m concentrating on telling you what actually happened, no fancy mixing of fact and fiction. I’ve had to read a whole lot to understand it all myself. It’s turned out to be one mother of a cold case review. I’ve tried figuring it all out. It’s my own frickin’ Wisconsin Death Trip. Watch out, homies, it might start something in you also. As for me, it ain’t over yet, maybe never will be.

  Spool One

  The source:

  Abbotskerswell, Devon, 1878

  —What here? Is it on?

  Doctor Kaiser: Yes, it’s on, just speak into the microphone please.

  —This end? …Just talk? …[long pause on the recording and the sound of tapping]… Starts with Ma I s’pose… Ma was a scryer, see. Those eyes could look into the heart of things. Every whips in a while she took me to a secret place called Ladywell. Whips in a while, that means every now and then, doc.

  Doctor Kaiser: I see, go on, Mister Lee.

  —The Ladywell was hidden away at the back end of the village. You could see your future there. The water was clear and bright but seeming with no bottom to it. Ma would throw in a bent pin and the pin would sink with no ripple. Ma said that what you dream of that night will be what you will become. Maids saw their husbands. I would see the man I was to be. I couldn’t be fussed to wait for dreams and I’d go on at her ’til she told me what she’d seen. She told me that she’d seen me as a grand fellow, more important than any in the village. She said my name would be on the lips of all in the country. Well, she was to prove right about that, [laughter]. How’s that sound, doc? Is that what you want?

  Doctor Kaiser: That’s fine, please proceed.

  —In those days we believed in those witchy ways. That was how we was brought up, with spells and curses and the White Witch of the Moor and that. I never really thought much of it, even when the papers said I could never be hung because I was protected by a wise woman’s spell.

  Doctor Kaiser: You appeared in the newspapers?

  —That’s right, doctor. I was ‘The Man They Could Not Hang”. That was so many years ago. I’m going to try and tell you how I got to end up being that man. It’s a twisty road that led to it but those horrible nights in Town Cottage were the start of it. It’s all branded clear in my mind though I’ve tried to forget it. Time and again Millie and I’d be lying side-by-side. Ma would rake the fire and set the fireguard. She’d say goodnight to Granfer on his truckle bed in the front room then her feet would clump up the stair. The village would settle for the night. Maybe you’d hear the Bonds next door rattle a bucket and further off beasts calling in Maddicott’s yard. Everything seemed to hold its breath. Then we’d hear it. First, a man’s voice and someone laughing. They’d be coming up Slade Lane from the Tradesman’s Arms. Then the voices getting louder, the scrape of boot nails and the sound of a song. The Bond’s dog would begin yipping until someone quieted it. Downstairs, we’d hear Granfer clear his throat. The front door latch would sound, boots coming in with a crunch on the parlor tiles. Pa’s voice, “We have spent all our tin on women and gin, all on beer and tobakker.” That’s a drinking song, doctor.

  Poor Millie used to whisper to me to hide away, for here he was agin, coming home drunk as a drain. Boots on the stair, a lamp sizzling as it swung in his hand. His big shadow on the wall. His crook-backed shadow as he leant over Millie’s bed. He’d whisper her name and call for his little cubby-down girl. She would just stay quiet. He’d often sit on her bed, I could hear it creak. Sometimes I peeked out the blankets though it could get me a larruping. I’d see his hair, wiry in the light, a red neckerchief still on but with braces down on each side. Sometimes he’d ask her why did Ma hate him so. The lamp would go out. There’d be something happening in the dark that seemed to go on forever then all of a sudden Ma’s voice scraping out from the other room. Calling him to stop paiks’n about and come to bed. It would sound like a command but there’d always be fear in it. There’d be quiet for a bit then the scratching about would begin agin. Once more Ma calling out his name. He’d answer that he was coming dreckly but he’d go on crooning after Millie under his breath. She’d be dead quiet. Then there’d be a banging and knocking and he’d be back on his feet moaning that Ma was a sour zab crow and worse. Boots would thump off. Loud spitter-spattering, probably the chamber pot then the bedroom door would bang shut. It would seem so dark in that room afterwards. I’d ask Millie if she was alright ’n she’d tell me to go to sleep. Said it was nothing. Soon mended, soon mended. So many nights we’d lie together like that.

  Shall I go on? You don’t mind me talking like that? [no answer on the recording, maybe Kaiser only nodded] I liked to watch Millie of a morning. That glimpse of her bare back, those two little dimples just above the waist line of her drawers as she pulled a shift over her head. Then she’d comb her long hair before pinning it up to show her lovely long neck, like a swanner duck. I seem to see her again sometimes now, just when I’m waking, a shape against the window there.

  Doctor Kaiser: So you were raised in the country?

  —In a village, sir, in deepest Deb’m, back in England. There’s nothing like it here. It was a close-knit place. Heifers would be roaring at Maddicott’s and carters rattling on the lane and the dung-heap roosters calling all the way down through the village. That would be the next dawn or any dawn when I were a boy. Pa would usually be up and gone to the quarries, thank the Lord. He’d pull on his clay-smeared gaiters and spare us having to see him over breakfast.

  I’d get out of that cramp cottage and go up past the dirty old yards of Town Farm and Maddicott’s and over the brook past the Ladywell. The wind from the moors would clear my head as I went to my penny jobs. Maybe working with the shepherds, carving at the winter-rotted sheep’s hooves or docking the tails of the new lambs. We would throw the scraps to the dogs. I learned to cut strong and clean. The shepherds told me that it was best to cut on a waning moon, that way you avoid bleeding. I knew not the truth of it. Or there’d be work feeding the beasts at Town Farm. I sometimes worked the chaff cutter and the root slicer there, cutting the mangels to feed the shorthorns. Once, Farmer Maddicott let me look after an orphan white calf. I taught it to suck milk from my fingers and took my duties so serious-like that I’d get up special early to feed it. I loved that calf. It came to my call and I gave it a name. What was it? Ess, here it comes—Tafferty. Not bad, eh, doc?

  Doctor Kaiser: Please continue.

  —One day I heard the calf calling and found its byre empty. I ran about the yards and found Maddicott’s men dragging it by a rope to a barn. They cracked poor Tafferty bet
ween the eyes with a maul and cut his throat. One farm hand told me that all knows that ’ee gives no name to something that will not live long. He said they were veal calves, didn’t I know? No, I had not known but I soon learnt that all comes to nort in the harsh hand of nature.

  Doctor Kaiser: You have no happy memories of childhood?

  —Not while Pa was around. He’d come home nights wanting to make amends. He’d sit at table talking to himself or us, it was hard to tell, muttering how he’d taken on a load that previous night, oh ess, oh Lord ess. He’d be rubbing at his face, his eyes looking all uneasy, oh ess, a roit load.

  As evening came on Pa would become more cheery. He’d call for zyder hot and he would try and push Granfer on to join him in a drink, but he would usually refuse. At other times he’d make play to chase Millie round the kitchen table. She’d try and get away as his big red hands pulled at her pig tails. He would become more fretful as the evening rolled on until he’d suddenly rise, saying he was seeing a man about a hoss, and he’d be gone down the lane. Then we could all rest easy for a while.

  Stains

  The ceiling above my bed is all freckled with brown stains. Creeping khaki blobs. The landlord said it’s mold and I don’t open the windows enough. I’ve tried cleaning it with bleach and Clorox Clean Up but it keeps coming back. In fact, I seem to be seeing stains in everything: saffron halos on the sheets, diesel plumes on the river’s back, muddy tattoos on dark skin. Don’t worry, I’m not going to get all metaphorical on you. I guess contamination is part of the process. That voice of John Lee just seems to make me question everything.