Call Me Ismay Read online

  CALL

  ME

  ISMAY

  by

  Sean McDevitt

  The following is a work of fiction.

  While inspired by true events involving the Titanic and in some instances based on direct testimony from public inquiries, all of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author's imagination- or are figures of history used in an entirely fictitious manner. The Church of All Saints in Winkleigh (Church of England, Diocese of Exeter) is a real place, and it does contain the remains of a certain Bartholomew Gidley- but it's certainly not a starting place for would-be vampire detectives, nor should it ever be treated as such.

  Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. No disrespect toward the victims or survivors of the Titanic disaster- or the descendants of Bartholomew Gidley- is intended, nor should be inferred.

  © 2013 by Sean McDevitt.

  For my father, Dr. Steven J. McDevitt, who first introduced me to the Titanic.

  PROLOGUE

  Joseph Bruce Ismay- known to history as J. Bruce Ismay, the chairman of the company that built the Titanic- was born December 12th, 1862 in a small town near Liverpool. He died on October 17th, 1937 in London. However, some say he suffered a form of death on April 15th, 1912, when his beloved ship foundered in the icy waters of the North Atlantic.

  A pampered, at times seeming to be unfairly blessed man about town became a pariah overnight, when word came that the chairman of the White Star Line had somehow managed to save his own hide while more than fifteen hundred souls slipped into their watery graves. Ismay did not appear to do much to improve the public perception of himself, as his testimony during official inquiries into the Titanic disaster seemed to depict a clueless, unfeeling caricature of a man who seen, heard, and done virtually nothing while an unthinkable tragedy unfolded around him.

  Not that I remember... I have no idea, sir... That I could not tell you, sir... That I could not say. Surely those words had a hint of humanity to them when Ismay actually uttered them, but in the stark print of newspapers the world over, Ismay came across as evasive, unconcerned. As to that I have no knowledge, sir... I could not answer that.

  Almost every quote attributed to him seemed to reflect the selfish, the craven: I'm starved; I don't care what it costs or what it is, bring it to me. Those words were said to have come from Ismay as he set foot on the Carpathia, the steamship that had sped through a dangerous field of ice in a valiant attempt to rescue those who had escaped the Titanic by lifeboat. I'm starved. Those words were absorbed by the public, accepted without question and sealed his reputation as a man who saw himself as grievously inconvenienced by a horrid turn of events that had just happened to consume the lives of hundreds upon hundreds, including women and children.

  The world's rejection of Ismay was reflected in how he led his life in the years after the disaster. He never spoke publicly about the Titanic again. Indeed, he was rarely seen by anyone at all; while his wife did continue to lead a sociable life by entertaining guests in their home, she was careful to do so only when he was away. He was apparently incapable of looking anyone in the eye upon his return to England, and during the rare occasion he was engaged in dialogue it was noticed that he would spend most of a conversation looking down at his shoes. In time, he found himself blackballed by his favorite social club. A trusted friend refused to even see him after the disaster.

  It was said that in the years after the Titanic disaster, his screaming nightmares woke up the entire household. It was decided by those close to him that- in the interest of peace- the name Titanic should never again be mentioned in his presence.

  Once a week, he would ride a train from London to Liverpool, always sitting in the exact same first-class compartment with the curtains drawn- travelling alone, never letting anyone enter or share his space. The train's porters remarked amongst themselves on those curious occasions when it was thought that the sound of soft sobbing could be heard coming from the darkened compartment, although the constant rolling thunder from the train's wheels made it impossible to say with certainty.

  CHAPTER ONE

  November 21st, 1911

  Kerry Langston turned his collar up as a light early morning rain started to drizzle, and he took a long but not especially satisfying drag off his self-made cigarette. He'd been walking on the gritty stones of Church Lane for only a moment when the gloomy mist that had initially greeted him turned into little drops of water falling from the sky. After a futile attempt to cup his hand like an umbrella over his wrinkled little tube of cheap tobacco, he quickly realized that it would soon become sogged and useless in the infamous rains of Devon County, so he pitched it aside and continued on his determined path forward.

  His eyes remained steadfastly focused on his target: the Parish Church of All Saints, Winkleigh, a church that dated from the 12th century and was believed to have been dedicated to Saint Thomas of Canterbury. As he approached from a westward direction, he was struck by the sheer height of the church's stone tower- more than five hundred feet, far taller than he had expected. As his eyes were pulled in awe toward the cloudy heavens, just as its architects had intended, he suddenly noticed that he'd neglected to take into account the rain. This oversight was rewarded with vision-distorting blotches on his horn rimmed glasses.

  As he continued on his solitary, fog-shrouded pilgrimage under a canopy of leafless trees, Langston fumbled in the pockets of his tweed coat for what had to be the tenth time. He continually reassured himself he had in fact brought along his battered, falling-apart-at-the-seams featherweight diary that held more than a year's worth of handwritten notes, along with two pencils bearing multiple tooth marks. Slips of paper, each carefully notated with descriptions and categories, poked out from numerous sections of the diary, in the event he might need to quickly view a written reference during the course of his research. It was exactly this sort of compulsive, dogged attention to detail that had sustained him in his career as a reporter. After an attempt at restarting Sixpenny Magazine- an exercise in futility that had very nearly cost him and a few of his colleagues their hard won reputations- Langston now found himself frequently contracted with the London Daily Chronicle. He'd been keeping his editor at bay for some time now, promising a story that would, in his words, “shake the foundations of our empire.” Indeed, if Langston's suspicions on this one story were accurate, he feared that his reporting would almost certainly cause a volcanic political upheaval not only in Great Britain but the rest of the civilized world.

  He cringed upon remembering the lie he'd been telling about his investigation- keeping his employer in suspense with promises of a story about a certain person being secretly held in custody by the authorities for reasons that involved the nation's security, no less. While Langston actually had no such lead, he felt it necessary to distract his editor with at least something while he tried to pull together the pieces of a puzzle that he knew would sound completely insane.

  The subject of his journalistic attention, Edward Lyons, had as of yet given no sign that he had become aware of Langston's shadowy pursuit. Indeed, Lyons seemed to pay him no mind for the most part, and when he was within physical reach of the man at public functions he seemed entirely oblivious to Langston's physical existence. Lyons was an imposing figure; handsome, with a pampered moustache and steel blue eyes, altogether captivating and calculating. While Lyons never made mention of what the Chronicle had to say about him (nor did the MP ever seem to suffer any real lasting repercussion from newspaper reports) Langston's journalistic competitors did grumble amongst themselves on how he had seemingly hounded Lyons in the interest of what had to be some sort of political agenda. He had penned several articles i
n which Lyons appeared nothing short of bizarre as one of the few Liberal MPs in the House of Commons to oppose a so-called “People's Budget.” Although Lyons insisted that he opposed the measure strictly on fiscal and not social principles, Langston more or less succeeded in portraying Lyons as a slick opportunist looking to endear himself to some of the conservatives in the House of Lords. It was widely believed that Langston had drawn a bead on Lyons because of the MP's legendarily vocal- almost outlandish- support of women's suffrage. Nothing could have been further from the truth.

  Kerry Langston privately felt that women over the age of 30 should have an inalienable right to vote; Black Friday, in which hundreds of suffragettes were viciously beaten by police outside the House of Commons, had sickened him to the point of despair. A few months after Black Friday had occurred in November of 1910, his beloved sister Nancy, an East London suffragette, had endured unspeakable violence when business owners- mistaking a peaceful protest by a group of women as a violent mob about to smash windowpanes and light fires- had overreacted, and sent pots full of boiling water cascading down into the street, sending scalded, shrieking women fleeing in all directions. Fearing further retribution from those who opposed suffrage, Nancy's husband pleaded with Langston to never disclose any connection to his wounded sister in the course of his own news reporting. Therefore, any distaste for the women's movement was out of the question when it came Langston's relentless focus on Lyons; it was merely based on a sincere interest in the unique nature of a news story involving a liberal politician who opposed a tax on wealthy landowners.

  Meanwhile, during the four years in which Langston had chronicled the MP from East Surrey (Kingston-Upon-Thames, to be exact), there was an especially dark shadow laying over the name of Lyons that remained unpublished. The whispers first came to Langston from somewhere in the political realm, elusive... the sort of rumor that lingers and persists but somehow is never written down nor properly accounted for. It was said, with dogged insistence, that Edward Lyons had dabbled in necromancy- and not just on a shallow, casual level. Although seances were not uncommon amongst the privileged and influential upper echelons of London society, this was said to run deeper... far deeper.

  As Langston continued walking at a steady pace down Church Lane, the list of alleged transgressions on the part of Edward Lyons began to scroll through his head as it had so many times before, sending a nervous energy through him, causing alternate feelings of heat and cold all over his body. The sounds of small wet stones grinding under his shoes as he hurried along, occasionally resulting in a loud cracking noise, were an unwelcome reminder of the sound of gunfire... a noise that was sure to engulf the streets of London if he didn't proceed on this story with the greatest caution.

  Lyons, it was supposed, alleged, and hinted at- no mere apprentice necromancer. Langston had been told and strongly suspected that Lyons's frequent use of biblical parables within the context of his political speeches was intended to cast a spell upon his constituents, not to invoke the power of prayer. Langston had furtively mentioned his suspicions to a few colleagues, and they had brushed him off, insisting that Lyons was only striking political poses, and nothing more. What disturbed Langston the most was the multitude of anonymous letters, insisting that Lyons had engaged in rituals involving the blood of sacrificial animals- and alarmingly, perhaps even blood procured from humans. (It was claimed the blood had been collected voluntarily from a few willing participants, but in some cases it might even have been taken from subjects that had not given their full consent.)

  These letters had been arriving at the London Daily Chronicle for quite some time addressed directly to Langston. A young staffer at the Chronicle, Stanley Johns, had a quiet agreement with him- that he would intercept any letters in the mailroom appearing to come from this particular source, and make certain they were delivered to Langston personally. Langston would then review the contents in private. Whomever the author was, they had always used precisely the same yellow parchment paper, writing their details in an oddly elongated hand, and had placed a seal on the envelope using dark red beeswax. The seal itself had remained a mystery to Langston, who believed that it resembled a bastardized version of a Masonic symbol. However, as a recent Entered Apprentice, Langston was extremely reluctant to consider any possible link between the letters and a non-political organization.

  It was always at this moment of reflection that Langston caught himself sighing out loud in frustration at the preposterous details in some of the letters. Weird passages included descriptions of a hotly contested and argued upon Prophecy, supposedly foretelling of the ascension of a vampiric leader, when it was generally accepted within that dark world there were no true leaders, just blackhearted lieutenants who meted out destruction and punishment as they saw fit. Yet the sheer volume and depth of those handwritten letters, evidently coming from one unknown source, was so painstakingly precise in detail. (Langston never told Stanley Johns the contents of the special letters, but the young man was sensitive to the probability they contained important material, due to the fact that Langston frowned deeply whenever they were presented to him.) Since time immemorial, some political enemies have never restrained themselves from engaging in underhanded, even diabolical, attempts to subterfuge their rival. Of course, there was also the likelihood of Lyons as a public figure getting unwanted and unwarranted negative attention from someone quite possibly unstable, therefore rendering them an unreliable source. However, Langston found himself unable to ignore the fact that some of these letters and their details had passed through the first few steps of an investigation as though they could be true; on page after page, specific dates, times, and locations had been mentioned. Langston painstakingly reconstructed Lyons's schedule, determining that in all reported instances, the MP from Kingston could very well have been at some of the unholy events these letters had described. Even more disquieting, Langston was able to track down witnesses who had at least seen Lyons near the locations in question.

  As Langston made final his approach to the church, he shot a quick glance behind to ensure that no one had seem him approach the building- and also to confirm he hadn't been followed. The morning rain had begun to intensify and he could begin to feel the moisture seeping in through the cloth of his cap. Langston took a brief moment to steel his nerves as he prepared to enter the church's arched granite doorway- but momentarily, he found himself distracted by the sight of a sundial in the apex of the gable. Bloody lot of good a sundial will be on this rainy day, he thought humorously to himself. He allowed himself a soft chuckle- but then he couldn't help but notice the inscription just above the sundial, its eccentric Middle English letters etched in stone and darkly enhanced by the rainwater:

  Life's but a shadow

  Man's but dust

  This Dyall Says

  Dy we all must.

  Langston stood blinking at the lettering far longer than he had anticipated. Rain continued to fall, splashing into his face, and yet his gaze was unbroken even as small rivulets of rain momentarily blurred the lettering. Is this a warning? The thoughts raced through his head. Is it too late for me to leave Devon? For God's sake, is someone following me? He allowed himself another furtive glance over his shoulder, confirming that the trail behind him was empty. This is insane, that is just doggerel from centuries ago, he assured himself. However, his brief respite was snatched from him as he took one more look at the sundial- specifically, what was resting above it; gazing down upon him was what appeared to be a crudely shaped skull. Langston removed his water-fogged glasses and shuffled his feet for a moment as he contemplated its grim, eternally grinning countenance.

  “Enough nonsense,” he finally muttered to himself impatiently. “Let's get on with it.” He reminded himself that gargoyles often were used by churches to convey messages to common, illiterate people, and the skull was meant most likely as a grim reminder of mortality and death. He gently pushed the church door open, letting himself in. He allowed his eyes to rea
djust as he removed his cap. Indeed, it would take several moments for his vision to accommodate the empty church's early morning gloom, and to properly clean his glasses on the corners of his jacket. He found himself once again taken aback by the sheer size of the church. Nothing in his research up until this point had indicated that the Church of All Saints in Winkleigh was more than a modestly sized place of worship. As Langston fumbled in his pockets for his diary and his pencils, once more the nagging concerns surged forward in his mind- the worries that he may have been misled, or perhaps he had misunderstood Lyons from the beginning. His stomach lurched a bit, and he wished for a moment that he had availed himself of a continental breakfast back at the George Hotel. However, as he brought the diary into his grasp, he reminded himself that this latest lead, if correct, would finally determine whether or not his suspicions were justified.

  Langston tried to quietly clear his throat, but his attempt still resulted in what sounded like a large frog, his utterance echoing with a deep resonance on the ancient walls. The dark, wet smell of old stones filled his nostrils- cathedral air, he called it- as he opened his diary, searching for the information he needed. It's not as if I have to check it again, he thought to himself. That is- I mean to say- I know that HE is here. As he thumbed through the pages that he'd visited so many times before, he at last came to the section in his handwritten notes he had been looking for. 'Bartholomew Gidley. 1728-1762. Subtitle: The Situation.' So many nights he'd spent contemplating those dates, waiting and wondering, wanting so badly to see those numbers actually etched in stone.