The looming architecture of the National Parapsychological Museum came closer as Audrey and Hugo bustled to get in from the whipping rain outside. Even in the harsh London weather, the majestic front steps swarmed with camera-handed tourists and impatient would-be ticket purchasers. With a flash of their IDs at the ticket booth, the couple were waved inside by a smiling older woman.
“What exactly are you hoping to find?” Audrey Baxter asked her boyfriend.
“I’m not sure. I just feel like I should check out this exhibit where Jessa experienced that intuition.”
“So what do you actually mean by intuition? It’s such a vague description. It’s not strictly a parability, is it?”
“It is and it isn’t. It’s not taught on a parapsych curriculum, if that’s what you mean. It’s more a combination of aspects from different parabilities. It’s sometimes described as a sixth sense. And unfortunately, it’s not easy to study, because it’s unpredictable and pretty rare.”
“But you think Jessa has it?”
“It’s hard to say.”
“Why? Hugo, you can be honest with me. I know I’m a lateral, but I do study parapsychological fields.”
“I know, and you probably know more about parapsychology than most parapsychs, I don’t doubt that at all.”
“What it is, then? Is it a bad thing? Do you think something’s wrong with Jessa?”
He stopped. “I can’t say I know what’s going on in Jessa’s head, parapsych abilities or otherwise. I know she has great potential, but unfortunately, she’s also probably the most stubborn and curious kid in the class, and those are traits that can get people in trouble. The only thing I know for sure is that Jessa’s had two strange experiences, both apparently linked by this Silas Lynch.
What’s making me wonder is this vision she had. She said she saw two men in dark coats take Annora. She doesn’t even know it yet, but that part of her story correlates with some of our eyewitness accounts of suspicious activity. So even if her vision wasn’t futuresight as I know it, she might actually be onto something.”
They walked the rest of the way to the Silas Lynch exhibit in silence, looking around at all the statues, paintings, and artefacts being ogled by tourists’ faces and camera lenses.
“Here it is,” Hugo pointed to the display case detailing the story of Silas Lynch.
“I remember I was a kid when this was on the news,” said Audrey. “My dad used to say he was a ‘nasty piece of work’.”
“Mmhmm,” Hugo muttered, absentmindedly waving his hand gently in front of the glass.
Audrey sidled up to him. “Can you… feel anything?”
“No,” he said, stepping back. “The window is probably preventing me from reading anything. If there’s even anything to be read in these objects, that is.”
He stepped back even further, looking broadly at the exhibit. “Nothing’s jumping out at me. I don’t know what I was expecting, honestly. I just thought maybe I’d see something,” he sighed. “All right. I guess we can go.”
They began to walk away when Audrey looked back one more time.
“Hugo,” she pointed. “Look.”
A museum worker was opening the window display case.
“Excuse me!” Hugo Fletcher rushed back. “Just wondering, what are you doing?”
“Doin’ my job, mate,” the man replied. “Gotta take one of these things out of the exhibit.”
“Why?”
“Dunno, mate,” the young Londoner said, pulling on protective gloves. “We move stuff around and take stuff away all the time. Usually, it’s ‘cause the piece is owned by a private collector, y’see, and sometimes they’re movin’ it to a different museum, or maybe they just want it back for their own collection, y’know?”
“I see.” Hugo and Audrey watched as the man carefully picked up a book from the display, closed it and brought it to a trolley, where he placed it on a specially laid-out piece of fabric. “Do you know who owns this piece?” Hugo said.
“Wouldn’t ‘ave a clue, mate. You might be able to find out in the exhibit directory. Look up that number,” he pointed to the tiny code at the bottom of the information plaque. “That might tell you summin’.”
He folded the book in the fabric and placed it in a metal box, then locked the lid in place. “‘ave a good one, mate,” he uttered, then pushed the trolley away through the museum.
“Apparently, the book has been in the museum’s possession since the early 90s,” Hugo read aloud from a netpad at the information station in the museum foyer. “It’s owned by someone called Francis Jackson. Ring any bells?”
Audrey shrugged.
“Me neither,” he said. “And under ‘current status’ it says ‘Returned to owner.’ Interesting that the owner of this book in the Silas Lynch exhibit would want it back at basically the same time that Jessa would have this intuition about Lynch.”
“It could just be coincidence,” Audrey postulated. “How do we find out if there’s a connection?”
“It might be worth looking into this Francis Jackson person. And just for the hell of it, let’s check out the database and read up on Mr Silas Lynch.”
“Hugo,” Audrey lowered her tone, “do you really think that Silas Lynch could be alive, and have something to do with your investigation? I mean… the kidnappings? Really?”
“Well, when that guy took the book out of the case, I could sense the energy coming from it. That book has something to tell. Unfortunately, I wasn’t close enough to object-read it. I don’t know. This could all be nothing. It could be meaningless. But it’s my duty as an Agent to treat any lead with sincerity.”
“You’re considering Jessa’s vision-thing an actual lead, now?” Audrey said with disbelief. “Shouldn’t you be following up with more, you know, substantial leads?”
“Audrey,” he said gravely, “this is the only lead we have.”
#
The high-speed trains of the London Underground echoed gently in the background as Hugo and Audrey waited at the platform. Their train arrived quickly, defying its own groaning gravitational pull on the electric rails. It slid into position at the platform, coming to a standstill with a light hiss.
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“So where exactly are we going to execute this idea of yours?” Hugo asked.
“Have you been to the Humboldt Library?”
His response of a shrugged shoulder told her he had not.
“Well, it’s incredible,” she said.
The train doors closed silently, and the standing passengers took hold of the rails as the vehicle hummed into action and pulled into the tunnel.
“It’s a huge block of a building, and there are no windows, so from the outside, it looks very bizarre.”
“This is the Churchill Line express service to Dartford. The next stop will be Leicester Square.”
“Oh yeah, I’ve seen that place,” he said. “It’s gigantic.”
“It is, there are over a million volumes inside. Some of the most valuable and influential books in the world are stored there, first editions and such. There are rare books, manuscripts, ancient scriptures from when people were beginning to explore parapsychism. But it’s also home to the Archives.”
“What’s that?”
“Well, as you know, all of the UK’s social records are stored electronically, but for as long as we’ve been keeping records digitally, we’ve been continuing to store analogue records too.”
“So the Births & Deaths records are there…”
“Exactly. Births, deaths, parapsych registrations, all the original paperwork is there. If the kids were right and someone removed data from the online database, we might be able to find something out from the hard copies.”
“Is it easy to get into a place like that?”
“Actually no, it’s quite difficult,” she smiled proudly. “But I’ve already been fully vetted and given clearance access as a PhD student, and I can check in up to one guest with me when I visit.”
“This is the Churchill Line express service to Dartford. The next stop will be Devon Place.”
Audrey and Hugo walked the one block from Devon Place station to the Humboldt Library. It was every bit as impressive as Audrey had described. The intimidating concrete exterior stood out from the other surrounding buildings, in contrast with both the intricate old ones and the alien modernities.
“Wow. This might be the ugliest building in London,” Hugo wrinkled his nose.
“It’s windowless to protect the rare volumes that can be ruined by sunlight. Just wait until you see inside.” She tugged his hand and urged him toward the entrance.
IDs shown, fingerprints scanned, cellular devices handed in and any metal items metal detected, and they proceeded to the central part of the special collections library.
The cube-like shape from the outside was mirrored on the inside, where a smaller yet still gigantic cube stood regally in the centre, storeys upon storeys of books behind a cage of windows, all bathed in a soft golden light.
“Woah.”
“I know,” Audrey agreed. “It’s the coolest place, and always super quiet and relaxing because nobody really comes here. But anyway, let’s go. Over here,” she lead him away from the cube and toward a nondescript door at the back of the room.
A simple sign on the door read “Archives.” On the other side, they descended a flight of stairs to another set of doors, open this time, welcoming them inside.
“Audrey!” a delighted voice said from behind a desk.
“Mrs Mays, how are you?” Audrey kissed the older woman on the cheek.
“I’m well, dear, and yourself?”
“Very well, thanks. This is my colleague,” she said, “Mr Hugo Fletcher.”
He kindly shook the lady’s hand.
“Just here to check a few records, if that’s all right.”
“Of course, dear! Go ahead—you know where everything is.”
“Thanks, Mrs Mays.”
Audrey led Hugo down a narrow corridor with a single keypad entry door at the end. She confidently entered the code and clicked the doorknob open.
“Access past this point with security escort only?” Hugo read aloud the sign. “And that lady just let you walk right in here?”
“I used to come here a lot when I was interning at the hospital. A lot of birth and death fact-checking, and that sort of thing. But there’s also a computer lab down here in a pretty little reading room, so sometimes I like to come here to catch up on my books. Mrs Mays doesn’t mind.”
The cavernous Archives sprawled out before them. Rows of shelves followed rows of shelves, floor to ceiling, packed with binders and books and boxes labelled with categories that Hugo couldn’t accurately read because Audrey was so swiftly directing them through the labyrinth. He quickly realised that they’d already made so many turns that if Audrey weren’t there, he’d have trouble finding his way back to the entrance.
“It’s a little claustrophobic, isn’t it?” he said.
“I think it’s quite cosy, actually,” Audrey cooed in response.
“But I mean, isn’t there a fire escape or anything?”
“Getting a little scared down here, are we, Mr Fletcher?” she mocked.
“Not scared,” he mumbled. “Just, you know, concerned about safety precautions. For you, I mean. It’s your safety I’m thinking about.”
“Oh, sure,” she laughed. “Well, thanks for looking out for me. Ah! Here we go, ‘Lynch’ starts here.” She pulled three large leather-bound books from the shelf and plonked them into Hugo’s arms. “I know how concerned you are with my safety, so I’m sure you won’t mind carrying these big heavy books for me.”
“Touche.”
Several twists and turns later, they arrived at the reading room.
“Okay, do you know how to work the national databases?” Audrey asked. “If you can do that, I’ll look up the Lynch family in the books and we can compare them.”
He nodded and they got to work.
Hugo was eventually able to access the same database pages that Maggie had found many weeks before in the school library.
“Found it. They were right, the Silas Lynch death record is incomplete.”
“All right…” Audrey muttered. She stretched across the three open volumes before her, looking from book to book, her fingers and her eyes quickly scanning and flipping the pages.
“I’m just checking… and cross-referencing… Hmmm,” she said loudly, finally looking up from the page.
“What can you see?” Hugo asked.
“I found Silas Lynch’s family. The cause of death is listed as “burn injuries and suffocation,” which is concurrent with the fire that we read about happening at their home in 1968.”
She placed her hand on the largest book of the three and read the facts as her fingertips traced them. Silas Lynch, born on the 12th of June, 1961, in the town of Woburn Vale, it says. But then if we look over here,” she moved to the second book, “his cause of death actually says ‘unknown.’ An official cause of death can only be logged when the death is verified by a recognised professional. So from that, we immediately know the verification process didn’t happen. But there is a death entry that says he died on the 7th of November, 1985.”
“I don’t understand.”
“His death entry was submitted but not verified. The reference here says the entry was logged a few days after he supposedly died. The rest is incomplete.”
“Can we find out who submitted the entry?”
“Already checking…” she flipped through the final book. “I just have to find the matching reference number to the one assigned to Silas Lynch’s death record. Aha, here it is. It says ‘This entry was supplied by Mr F Jackson’.” Audrey looked up at Hugo.
“Francis Jackson.”
Hugo Fletcher spun round on his chair and rapidly began typing into the database. His fingers made the subtlest of taps as they fell quickly onto the touchpad keyboard.
“Found him. Doesn’t seem like anything out of the ordinary, though. He’s old. Had a wife who died fifteen years ago. Still lives in Woburn Vale.”
“Where in Woburn Vale?” Audrey asked him, pulling her chair over to join him at the computer. “The book says the Lynch family lived on Lowe Road.”
“He’s at 10 Lowe Road.”
“The Lynches were at number 13.”
“Unlucky for some, eh?” Hugo muttered.
“So they were neighbours,” Audrey stated. “Check out the satellite view for 10 Lowe Road.”
He did as she suggested.
“That’s where number 13 would be,” Audrey said, pinching outwards on the screen to zoom in. “Looks like they just levelled it all to the ground after the fire destroyed it. And there’s number 10, right across the road. But here’s a question,” she turned to face Hugo. “If there are no members of the Lynch family left in Woburn Vale, and Silas has been gone for all these years, what would make Francis Jackson suddenly—”
“Want his book back from the museum?” Hugo finished the question.
“Exactly.”
They sat quietly, each thinking about the potential answers to their questions.
“What are you thinking?” she asked.
“Well, I thought Jessa and her friends were just grasping at straws with this Silas Lynch thing. Or at the very least just letting their imaginations get away with them. But now, after seeing all this, and the book being taken from the museum… I don’t know. Maybe I’m just crazy, but it does seem to be a little too coincidental.”
“It does. But it also raises so many other questions. If Silas is still alive, then where on Earth is he? How has he managed to remain undetected for all this time? And why hasn’t anybody noticed this oversight in the paperwork? I can’t imagine that nobody in database management thought it was strange that the death of a cult leader went unverified?” Audrey’s speech became more and more exasperated. “It’s a major blunder for the national database to leave a file incomplete! I mean, really! It’s government-run after all, so it’s very irresponsible of them to not keep the system as thorough as possible.” She exhaled heavily.
“Tomorrow after school, I’ll get the train out to Woburn Vale and have a look around.”
“Shouldn’t you tell the Agency about this first?” Audrey asked.
“Not yet. I don’t have enough to go on.”
She frowned.
“Don’t worry! I’m just going to pay our friend Mr Jackson a visit, that’s all.”