Lord Hale's Monster: Blue Moon Investigations New Adult Humorous Fantasy Adventure Series Book 13

by steve higgs

  ‘Plus Travis,’ Lord Hale added.

  ‘Eleven then,’ I concluded. ‘Of those people, two are already dead. We need to ask ourselves why?’

  Lord Hale bore a confused face. ‘Isn’t that a job for the police?’ he asked.

  Patience leaned in. ‘Sweetie, I am the police. I left my cuffs in the room, which is a good thing for you two because I feel like arresting someone for killing my feet.’ She stared at them. ‘You hear me. My feet are killing me! You two killed my feet. That’s foot murder right there. Not to mention the state of my dress now.’

  Ignoring her ramblings, I closed the notebook. Writing my thoughts down helped to get it clear in my head. ‘Someone wanted us trapped down here. That much should be clear to all of us, so the question is, who and why. Why are two men dead? Did Kevin stumble onto something after he left us? If so, did the same thing happen to Derek and that’s why there is no answer from the control room? We are trying to escape this trap they have us in, but I want to know what awaits us when we do.’

  ‘That ought to do it,’ Tempest’s dad said as the lined the table up again. Each foot was balanced on a pile of books almost three feet tall. It looked precarious, Big Ben clearly sharing my opinion as he climbed carefully on top of it. Everyone with a torch lit shone it toward the ceiling high above.

  Big Ben stands six feet seven inches tall in his socks so on top of a table boosted up by three feet of books he was able, with his stupidly long arms, to reach about sixteen feet into the air. This was a good thing because the ceiling was still more than two feet above his outstretched fingers.

  ‘Now for the fun bit,’ he murmured grimly. I wondered what he meant until he bent his knees and threw himself upward. As he reached the apex of his leap, he punched upward to strike the ceiling, smashing a hole through it with his meaty right first. He landed again, the table wobbling even with ten people holding it firm.

  Bits of plaster fell to coat his hair and clothes and face. Ignoring it, he dipped his knees and thrust upwards again. With a few more attempts, there was a sizeable hole and he had found a truss running along on the other side of the plaster board.

  With his next leap, he grabbed it with both hands, performed a muscle up and disappeared through the hole.

  Every face in the room was turned to look upwards. His phone torch came on, piercing the darkness in the ceiling void as he shone it around and his voice echoed as he called back down to us. ‘The void goes straight up. My torch isn’t powerful enough to see all the way to wherever the top is, but if that Kevin fella fell from the top, it’s no wonder he didn’t survive. I think there’s a crawl space ahead of me so I’m going to explore that.’ Several of the witches wished him good luck, Patience narrowing her eyes at them though they didn’t see it.

  We all waited in silence for his return, able to track his progress from the sound of his shoes on the roof trusses. When his head finally reappeared, he was filthy, covered in cobwebs and dirty from the dust mixing in his sweat. ‘There is a crawl space. It heads in the direction of the passageway with the barred door, but I’m too big to fit in it. Same problem I have with petite girls,’ he added quite unnecessarily. ‘I need someone small.’

  ‘I’ll go,’ said the blonde witch with the straight hair.

  ‘Pick me,’ insisted another. ‘I’ve got tiny hips.’

  Patience grabbed Frank by his jacket collar. ‘Here you go, Benjamin. One volunteer.’ I knew why she did it, I would have done the same, but Frank was arguably the smallest in the room anyway.

  It took a bit of juggling and balancing. Frank was never going to be able to reach the hole and they dare not stack any more books under the legs. So three men climbed onto the table; Tempest’s dad and Dr Parrish both giving Frank a boost to get him high enough to reach Big Ben’s outstretched arm.

  Big Ben was lying down over the roof trusses and now had Frank dangling in mid air from one hand. ‘Ready?’ he asked, but he didn’t wait for an answer, he just yanked Frank up through the hole in one fluid motion, Frank giving a little wail of concern as he vanished through the dark hole. Safely up, Big Ben poked his head back through. Looking at the witches, he said, ‘I think it would be better to send two, just in…’

  ‘No. One will do just fine,’ insisted Patience, glaring at the eager witches until they saw her and averted their eyes.

  Big Ben’s chuckle echoed back through from the void as he disappeared. Then we could hear his voice and Frank’s voice but couldn’t make out what either was saying.

  By my ear, Tempest’s dad said in a hushed voice, ‘Do you remember the scene in Alien when the captain goes into the tunnel to flush out the creature?’

  A lump formed in the pit of my stomach.

  Frank. Saturday, December 10th 2345hrs

  There was nothing to do but fret while we waited for Frank to reappear, no way of knowing if the crawl space he went into would lead him anywhere helpful or how long it might take to get there. With all that in mind, I gave in and sat myself down on the floor.

  Patience saw me and flopped down next to me, her arm touching mine. ‘All things considered, Amanda, I wish I had stayed at home.’ I couldn’t offer much in the way of argument – I felt the same. Mostly I was trying to keep a lid on my worry over Tempest. His father was staying strong, trusting his son to find a way to be okay. Tempest’s mother, however, was not doing very well so any sign of doubt on my part might tip her over the edge.

  We were all in the octagonal library, waiting for Frank to find his way safely to the other side of the door and then hopefully find a way to open it. The monster had to have ducked back out of it before barring it, or locking it, or whatever trick the person inside the suit had used to prevent our escape, so another concern was that the killer might still be hanging around. Tempest talked about Frank as if the small man were a warrior or something; he said he had the heart of a lion. Nevertheless, he wasn’t armed and there was no doubt the person he might face was capable of killing.

  Most of the dinner guests were milling about, doing very little and chatting among themselves, thankful we had light still.

  ‘How much juice is in your phone?’ I asked Patience, leaning my head her way to see.

  She popped her clutch open to take it out. ‘Twenty three percent battery. It was fully charged not long ago.’

  ‘Using the torch always kills the battery,’ I commented. I didn’t check mine, but I doubted it was much better. The lamps were all in use, which might prove to be a mistake; we had no more paraffin, or whatever they worked on, to refill them and ought to be conserving what we had by only using one at a time, not the four we had currently illuminating the room.

  Across the room, Gina and her fellow professors were still pouring through books and manuscripts. I couldn’t understand why since we had already proven the whole monster story to be a ruse, but they were distracting themselves and doing no one any harm so there was no reason to disturb them.

  Gina chose to disturb us though, the volume of their conversation creeping up as they became more animated. It didn’t take long for others to become interested, Dr Parrish taking it upon himself to get involved again. ‘Is something the matter?’ he asked.

  Professor Wiseman stopped mid-sentence, glanced down at the large book Gina held and poked a finger at a page. ‘How much of the assembled garbage in this room is props and how much is genuine?’

  The question caught Dr Parrish by surprise, stuttering as he looked about at the shelves, he said, ‘I, ah, I think it is all props.’

  ‘There,’ concluded Professor Wiseman to his colleagues, ‘I told you so.’

  Gina wasn’t convinced though. She turned the book around so she could show it to Dr Parrish, balancing it against a shelf because it was heavy. ‘This book was published in 1834 and it’s not a case of faking it by making it now and putting an old first-published date in it; the paper in the book is Chaucer’s old fine made by Eton Bond. Look – you can see the water mark.’ Gina held it up for a
ll to see and a few politely curious faces peered where she was pointing, though I was sure what they saw meant nothing to them.

  Professor Pope got it though. ‘It really is that old.’ When he saw that no one else followed, he explained. ‘Chaucer’s old fine was really high-end stuff, too expensive by far for today’s market. The last mill able to produce it went out of business in the last century.’

  They thought they were on to something and I was starting to find myself interested. Patience not so much which she confirmed by quietly grumbling, ‘Those guys need to get laid. They have way too much free time for studying.’

  Dr Parrish had screwed up his face in confusion. ‘So, it’s old paper. Why is that interesting?’

  Gina gave him a patient smile but flicked her eyes to Lord Hale. ‘Because our host recently claimed the monster and the entire tale was fabricated.’

  ‘Yes. It was,’ Dr Parrish defended.

  Gina pointed to the text again. ‘Not according to this it wasn’t. The whole story, almost to the word is recorded here.’

  Lord Hale looked very guilty when every pair of eyes in the room swung in his direction. He had been fiddling with his phone and getting more frustrated that it wouldn’t do whatever it was he wanted it to do, now he was aware that we were all staring at him. Struggling to find a lie, he said, ‘I had to base the story on something, so I used old family legends. It’s all utter tosh of course.’

  Gina shook her head. ‘I’m not so sure it is.’ Now that she had the attention of the crowd, she started to explain. ‘This book was written by Lord Hale and published in 1834. That would make him… what? Your great, great, great grandfather? He would have been one of the generations the curse skipped. He gathered evidence of the monster’s visitation. Eyewitness records from staff. Did you know that it wasn’t only the Lord Hales who were killed by the monster? Every person that attempted to intervene was killed too. I’ll read you a passage.’

  Gina cleared her throat. ‘The great house is sombre this morning. Lord Hale, my father, was killed last night by the very thing he did all he could to prevent. His butler, Swale, and three footmen defended him with rifles but to no avail as the monster claimed them all. Alas, he considered me too vital to risk and ensured my commanding officer assigned me to duty at Horse Guards in London. I return home today to find my ancestral home in mourning. I make it my vow to investigate this curse so that it will not befall my eldest son, Gideon.’ She looked back up to meet our faces. ‘This is real. Whether you want to believe it or not, there really is a monster plaguing this house.’

  No sooner did she make that announcement, than a low moaning noise just like the one we heard in the dining room began. At first, I couldn’t pinpoint where it was coming from, but air coming through the hole in the ceiling drew my eyes upward. A rush of wind flapped the tattered edges of the ceiling tiles and rattled the books and manuscripts on the shelves. Tempest’s mum crossed herself again, an action that seemed to be having little positive effect, and the witches began chanting once more.

  ‘Is this another one of your tricks?’ I shouted at Lord Hale, making no effort to conceal the warning my words contained.

  He held up his phone with an exasperated gesture. Then took the little radio from his pocket and held that up too. ‘I am cut off from everyone. They’re supposed to let us out when I call them.’

  The moan grew louder, the wind too as it buffeted my hair and made me cold. I jumped when an enormous figure came hurtling through the hole in the ceiling to crash into the table. It was just Big Ben though, looking filthy and yet still dashing when he flashed the room a smile. ‘Don’t worry, ladies; I am here. Hoorah!’ He took a second to flamboyantly pose atop the table with his hands on his hips like he was a superhero, then jumped down with a two-footed landing to accidentally bump into most of the witches.

  Patience cracked her knuckles.

  Big Ben’s tomfoolery lightened the mood for a split second, but it dipped sharply when something heavy smashed into the ceiling and left a dent. I ducked automatically, an involuntary reaction to my brain telling me the roof was about to cave in. It held but then the heavy something started to walk across the roof, and it was heading toward the hole.

  All any of us could do was watch the hole and wait. However, when I realised that was what I was doing, I pulled my mouth into an angry sneer and moved toward the centre of the room.

  ‘Girl, are you crazy?’ yelled Patience.

  The wind was gone and the moan, which built to a crescendo, stopped when the heavy thing hit the ceiling. It was quiet when the monster’s voice called out. ‘Lord Hale, it is time. Come forth so that no others need die in your stead.’

  It was Tempest’s father who spoke first. ‘I thought we all just decided that we were in an escape room and the monster story was all made up.’

  Gina shook her head sadly. ‘Invented, yes, but taken from real family legends that appear to have a basis of truth.’

  ‘Dr Parrish,’ Lord Hale stuttered nervously. ‘Dr Parrish, what do you have? I hired you because of your expertise in this field.’

  Dr Parrish was fiddling with an inside pocket. ‘Goodness, I could do with Frank right now.’ He shot a look at the witches as he crouched down to unfold a handkerchief. ‘Ladies can you be ready with a binding charm?’

  ‘We are earth witches,’ their leader replied. ‘We can only enhance and guide that which mother earth grants the world. Binding belongs in the dark arts,’ she chided as if talking to a beast.

  ‘Perfect,’ muttered Dr Parrish. ‘I’ll do it the hard way then.’

  ‘Bored,’ announced Big Ben, jumping back onto the table and standing so his head was directly underneath the hole. ‘Hey, monster. Come down here and fight. I’ll even let you have first hit.’

  The voice from above chuckled, a deeply awful sound which was followed by a disgusting, spindly limb shooting through the hole. Big Ben saw it coming but couldn’t get out of the way fast enough to stop it snagging his left shoulder. A spray of blood hit the floor near my feet as Big Ben tumbled off the table.

  ‘I shall return, Lord Hale,’ rasped the voice through the hole. Silence reigned for several seconds, only to be replaced by the sound of Dr Parrish berating Big Ben for ruining his big moment. ‘You utter fool. I could have wounded him and bound him to this house.’ He jabbed a finger at the handkerchief in his right hand. ‘Do you know what these are?’

  Big Ben guessed, ‘Yesterday’s sneezes?

  The blonde witch rushed across the room to his aid. ‘You’re bleeding.’

  ‘It’s just a scratch,’ he lied, blood now soaking the upper part of his shirt sleeve.

  Unperturbed by Big Ben’s injury, Dr Parrish sneered in his face. ‘These are shards of a dawn’s sunbeams. They cost more than you earn in a year and they would have injured the beast if I could have got into position, you great oaf.’

  Big Ben reached up to grab a handful of blood-soaked sleeve and ripped it off from the shoulder seam with yank. It exposed the wound for all to see. Then, just as Dr Parrish was carefully folding the handkerchief again, Big Ben grabbed it and used it to stem the flow of blood.

  ‘Whaaa!’ cried Dr Parrish but too late the precious cargo it supposedly contained was ruined forever.

  Big Ben tipped him a wink. ‘Thanks, pal.’

  The blonde witch was making herself useful, trying to get a look at the wound and not lick her lips too much as she handled his muscular arm. In the very top of his deltoid was a stab wound as if the monster’s paw ended with a knife. It was the same with poor Ronald who had run onto the monster’s weapon. Big Ben would survive though, the wound bad enough to leave a scar but no danger to his life.

  ‘We need more bandages,’ said the witch as she shucked her jacket and pulled up her skirts to get to the material beneath. That it exposed her toned, shapely legs all the way up to her upper thigh was no accident. It caught Big Ben’s attention, as she intended it to, but as she bent over to rip a piece of mate
rial from inside her skirt and in so doing made sure her breasts were hanging almost out of her top, Patience gave her a rough shove and knocked her over.

  ‘Excuse me, sugar,’ she said sweetly. ‘Large, black woman coming through.’

  I had to admit I was entertained but a thought shot through me suddenly as I remembered something I should never have been able to forget. ‘Frank’s out there!’

  Where is Lord Hale? Sunday, December 11th 0004hrs

  My pulse spiked as I ran to the passageway, snatching a lamp as I went and jumping over Kevin’s body in my haste. Dr Parrish came with me, both of us running, though Dr Parrish saw our separation from the group as a chance to air a grievance. ‘I really don’t like your big friend.’

  Now wasn’t the time and I was the wrong person to tell. What did he think I was going to do about it? Big Ben was a nightmare, but he was also great to have around if a problem presented itself that could be solved by beating everyone up, or by seducing a whole line of women. I didn’t bother to answer though because a loud banging started ahead of us.

  It sounded exactly like someone knocking urgently to be let in. Before we got there, my lamp held high to see what was ahead, Frank’s voice started. ‘Hey! Hey, inside, let me in.’ His wail confused me as I thought it was locked on his side.

  ‘We’re coming, Frank!’ I yelled back, quickening my pace to get there for him. He sounded terrified.

  In response I heard a panicked, ‘There’s something coming.’ Then I reached the door, a big wooden thing with a throw bolt in the middle. I threw the bolt and yanked the door open, Frank tumbling in and bumping into me, his face bounding off my left boob in the dark. Then he pushed off me and slammed the door shut again. ‘It’s coming!’ he gibbered.

  I had only seen the other side of the door for a split second, but I saw the large iron bolts fitted top and bottom. If we didn’t open the door now, whoever was out there could just lock us in again and I doubted Frank wanted a second trip through the crawl space.