The Jack Hansard Series: Season Two

Episode 6.1

I'd always wanted to go to London.

Small town jitters, that's what I had while growing up. That disease of youth that makes a thriving market town feel like a slow and sleepy suburb: a place where dreams went to die, or at least to be beaten out of you by the daily humdrum of not very much going on at all.

London was the escape route. The big romantic adventure, where dreams swashbuckled up and down the Thames with the tide. Of course, back then I didn't know that adventure is what you make it, and I hadn't yet heard the call of the open road.

So going to university seemed like my ticket to adventure. All the cool kids were doing it. My grades weren't great, but they were just good enough to scrape me a last-minute place on a Classics course at University College London.

It turned out to be the worst decision of my life.

Or the best, depending on how you look at it.

The problem was academics, and the fact that I wasn't one. By the end of my first year, a general disinterest in lecture halls and libraries paired with some drastically low exam results had me reconsidering my life choices. By the start of my second, I was already on the verge of dropping out.

The epiphany came on a Thursday, while I was in the Petrie Museum – UCL's collection of ancient Egyptian dead things – desperately searching for some semblance of pedagogical inspiration. I was looking at a case of magic amulets and pondering the mundanity of them (being mere lumps of jet and ivory) when, on glancing up, I saw a girl disappear through the wall.

'What the . . .'

I scanned the room for anyone else who might've noticed the apparition, but I appeared to be alone.

I inspected the patch of wall. Apart from some plaster in need of patching up, there was nothing out of the ordinary about it. The cases on either side housed some of the less interesting objects, beads and farming implements.

'Am I mad, or are you a ghost?' I said aloud.

It was well known the Petrie Museum was haunted. Students, though well-acquainted with anxiety-induced insomnia and the pitfalls of surviving on a diet of caffeine, energy drinks, and stress, still regularly reported paranormal occurrences in the course of their daily studies. Usually it was objects swimming in front of their eyes and textbooks going missing. Not women being swallowed by masonry.

Having considered my own question for a while, I decided to opt for 'mad' and knocked on the wall, because that's what a mad person would do.

When the wall rippled like a curtain of liquid, I nearly shit myself.

And when the head poked through, I was only one spoonful of sugar away from blacking out. Thank fuck I'd had a cup of tea that morning.

'What do you want?' said the head, which appeared to belong to a bald man with a scraggly goatee. He hissed at me when I didn't reply. 'Hurry up, sonny. Can't hang around with normies about.'

I struggled for words. 'I'm with the girl,' I said faintly. 'The girl who just . . . went . . . through . . .'

He squinted at me, unabashedly scrutinising my faded jeans and Counting Crows T-shirt with the hole in. 'That Cora,' he muttered, 'she sure picks 'em. Come on then.'

The head withdrew, leaving me staring at the undulating wall.

'Come on, boy!' said his voice from the other side.

I stretched out my hands, let my fingertips sink into the wall – a strangely gloopy texture – and then, eyes closed, took a big step forward.

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Author's Note

We finally made it to Episode 6! How does it feel to be glimpsing Hansard's beginnings? I know this section is a bit short but it felt right to cut off here. Lots more fun to come!