“Oh God.”
Why had he left her picture right on top?
Chapter 5
They did not wait for the ambulance but instead bundled their patient into the family SUV, Tim protesting all the time that he didn’t need it, that “Sonia fixed it up.” Sonia and Tara agreed that the nail had not severed a blood vessel and the damage was superficial. But all of the women and Carl insisted on Tim going to the hospital.
“None of us is a doctor,” Tara added. “Seriously, you need to get to the ER or whatever it’s called in England!”
There was a brief kerfuffle over who would go with Tim. Sonia took charge and decided that she would drive her husband into Berwick and that Anita should come too. Tara guessed that Ellie might be calmer without her aunt around. Ellie was red-faced and crying quietly. But Anita had gone into a virtual meltdown when Carl had rushed down the stairs, calling for the first aid kit.
“Your daddy will be fine,” Tara said firmly, hugging the little girl as they waved the Garland’s SUV goodbye. “You know he’s big and strong, and doctors will patch him up, and he’ll be home for bedtime.”
It suddenly occurred to Tara that she had no idea when bedtime was, but she pushed the thought aside. Ellie wouldn’t be able to sleep. Carl, pale-faced and clearly in mild shock, was at a loose end. Tara suggested tea for them, and juice for Ellie, and then they could all make something nice to eat.
“With ice cream for dessert,” she added, leading the girl back inside. “That much is clear. But first, refreshments.”
Ellie sniffled a little and was clingy but agreed with the plan. With a little coaxing, she was soon back at the kitchen table, drawing Daddy in the hospital being healed by doctors and nurses. There was a surprising amount of blood, but Tara was careful not to comment on this. Instead, she beckoned Carl outside the kitchen door, where they could keep an eye on Ellie but were beyond the range of small ears.
“You’re sure the nail gun rose off the floor?” she whispered. “It couldn’t have been an accident? He didn’t kick it, say?”
Carl shook his head emphatically.
“I just snapped out of this—I dunno, this weird daydream, in time to see the thing rise up. It was almost funny, like a conjuring trick or a crappy special effect, you know? Then it fired…”
He shuddered, and Tara patted his shoulder.
“Tim’ll be fine. But we need to do something about all this. It’s getting worse. Nothing this bad has happened before, right?”
Carl shook his head.
“Okay,” Tara went on, “I’ve already called this expert I know, a professor at Cambridge. He’s really brilliant—if anyone can figure this out, he can. I thought we’d be fine on our own, but the more I think about it, the less sure I am. I’ll call him again and ask him to come up. Meantime, you keep an eye on Ellie, okay? And I’ll have some of that builder’s tea, milk, no sugar.”
After she had brought Mortlake up to speed on what happened to Carl, Tara asked if he had any advice.
“My advice is: seek professional help,” he replied. “Would you like me to come up after all?”
“Yeah.” She sighed. “I was kinda hoping you might offer again. As I told you before, the family will probably say they can’t leave unless it gets a lot worse. And there’s a little girl in the case. We need to bring up the heavy artillery.”
Mortlake chuckled at that. He explained that he would fly to Newcastle the following day then rent a car and drive up. Tara felt intense relief, and for the first time, realized how tense she had become. But something else was bothering her.
“You sound kind of tired, Prof,” she said. “You been sleeping okay?”
“I’m fine,” he insisted. “Just a little insomnia, it happens to us old folks.”
After the call ended, she went into the kitchen to find Carl discussing plesiosaurs with Ellie while two mugs stood steaming on the counter. Sipping her tea, she thought back to her first encounter with the paranormal in England. It had been utterly unexpected, a direct onslaught by lycanthropes that could have killed her. She thought of her then-boyfriend Josh, how he had died in pain and terror while she fled. She had had no choice—flee or die. But it still felt wrong, cowardly. This time, there was no living monster, and she would not flinch in the face of whatever evil lurked in Haslam House.
***
Mortlake booked his plane ticket then decided to rent a car to drive to the airport. After that, he replaced the Crowe file on its shelf and went to his reference books. He settled down on the couch with three fat volumes, all hopefully covering some aspect of the problem. Firstly, he tried to find evidence of any strange phenomena linked to the house.
Ghosts and Specters of the Scottish Borders proved disappointing. Dating from 1937, it referred to Haslam House as “sometimes troubled by loud noises, such as knocks and moans” and added that “intense cold is sometimes experienced.” He moved on to Folklore of Northern England and almost lost himself in a plausible theory that the historical King Arthur had been a warlord in that part of the country.
“No, Opal,” he said to the dozing kitten. “No sidetracking, this is too urgent.”
He was about to set the folklore book aside when it occurred to him to look up York in the index. Perhaps “Helen York” referred to the city and a woman called Helen linked to it. But he found no Helens and nothing else that seemed pertinent, though York had more than its fair share of ghosts. Some, it was claimed, dated back nearly two thousand years.
“No sidetracking,” he repeated firmly.
In the final book, Victorian Spiritualism and Belief in An Afterlife, he struck gold. Tara’s previous reference to a trick slate had aroused his suspicion. He had heard the phrase before.
“Practicing deception on the gullible,” he murmured.
He found a passing reference to one Helen York. She was, for a few short years, a celebrated medium in the north of England.
“This is more like it,” he murmured to Opal. “She was, blah blah, ah yes, ‘held to be genuine by several eminent gentlemen’, thanks to her ability to manifest ‘spirits that spoke and moved objects during seances.’ There’s also something about a spirit cabinet but—aha! She was revealed as a fraud while visiting the Haslam family and vanished into the obscurity from which she had emerged. Date of death unknown.”
He snapped a few images of the pages with his phone and uploaded them to a file on the cloud. This took him a while, but he was proud that he had followed Tara’s advice to move into the twenty-first century. By this time, Opal had woken up and demanded that he move the book so she could perch on him.
“Helen York,” he said, scratching Opal behind her ears. “Vanished into obscurity, it says here. But what if she never really left, hmm? Might be worth checking out the local press archives on this one. Perhaps make a stop in Newcastle before going on to Haslam House.”
Mortlake sat and pondered how to phrase a message to Tara then decided to call her direct. However, it seemed Haslam House had no cell coverage at that moment. He cursed the spottiness of British telecom’s rural services and contemplated an email instead. Then, somewhat self-consciously, he decided to experiment with a video message. When he replayed his first attempt, he saw that he had cut off the lower half of his face. He experimented a little more and tried again. He was surprised how nervous the process made him, given the things he had faced in the past.
I’ll never be a TikTok sensation at this rate, he thought ruefully. Another achievement never to be unlocked.
Mortlake gave a stilted account of his findings and stressed that he was only guessing that Helen York might have died in the house. Opal woke as he reached the five-minute mark and stared up at him. Mortlake turned the phone awkwardly to show the kitten then signed off with “best wishes from the two of us.”
“Ghosts,” he said. “Not generally so hazardous as this. Not like werewolves, at least.”
He scratched Opal behind one ear.
“She should b
e fine until I get there, anyway.”
***
After Tara and Carl inspected the fridge and freezer, it was the workman who offered to cook. Tara was relieved and mildly impressed.
“I’ll make us a stir-fry chicken,” Carl explained, having established that Tara was a carnivore. “Classic ‘use up the stuff that’s about to go off’ recipe. Ellie, would you like one of these mini-pizzas?”
“Yes, please!” the girl said immediately. “And I won’t tell mummy you gave me pizza if I can have ice cream afterwards. And if it’s Cookie Dough. And if I can stay up until Mummy and Daddy and Auntie Anita get back.”
“You drive a hard bargain, missy.” Tara laughed. “How about I let you watch some TV while we have dinner. And later, when you do go to bed, I’ll read you a story? And I promise that Mummy will come and tuck you in when she gets back?”
Detailed negotiations proceeded for a while as Carl prepared the grown-up meal and put a small pizza in the oven. Tara was quite sure she had reason on her side, but the little girl had obstinacy, tears, and sheer volume on her side. Eventually, they settled on Tara’s basic terms, but with the proviso that Ellie could stay up until after seven-thirty and did not have to have a bath. After that, diplomatic triumph tension relaxed. Ellie was soon absorbed by the large number of BlunderBears cartoons that had been downloaded to her dad’s laptop.
“You should be working for the United Nations,” Carl remarked. “Are you sure you’ll be okay here tonight? I mean, I should be on my way home in a couple of hours, but I could always wait until they get back…”
“Nah, I’ll be fine,” Tara said, then regretted it. “I’ll just check my phone.”
There was no service. Carl said that sometimes they lost the signal due to the obsolete mast on the village church. It seemed that England’s rural areas were not a major priority for phone companies, which came as no great surprise.
She was almost certain that Anita and Sonia would return before dark, hopefully with a patched-up Tim. Tara knew that National Health Service doctors seldom offered an overnight stay unless they absolutely had to. But what if the Garlands did not come home till late? The sun was still high, it was not yet six. Tara did not want to be the only living adult in Haslam House after sunset, with a small child in her care and unquiet spirits lurking. She shoved the troublesome thought aside and concentrated on the food Carl served. It was good, if a little spicy.
“Sorry,” he said. “I do go for strong flavors. I think my taste buds were ruined by my father’s cooking—he struggled with eggs, burned porridge, you name it. When I was old enough, I started cooking for me and my brother. Probably saved us all from salmonella or worse.”
They talked about his childhood, how his mother had died when he was very young. Tara found herself warming to the young man, his good humor and sensitivity. The nice guy, she reflected, is always out there somewhere. But this was hardly a time for romance.
Ellie interrupted them with a question.
“Where’s the lady’s room?”
Tara smiled down at the girl and shrugged.
“Shouldn’t you know that?” Tara persisted.
“I tried to find it once but it wasn’t there,” she said. “It should be all the way upstairs, but it isn’t. There’s just a lot of old things. It’s dusty and horrible.”
Tara pondered that while Carl raised his fork and waved it up toward the ceiling.
“Do you mean all the way upstairs to the attic?” he asked. “Because that’s just full of junk. And you shouldn’t be roaming around up there, young lady. It’s not safe!”
Ellie did an impressive eye roll and returned to her pizza. Tara asked if anyone had noticed anything unusual about the attic. Carl shrugged.
“We just checked for damp, the usual stuff. Insulating it is the last job on the list, what with it being summer…”
He paused and frowned, evidently struck by a new thought. Then he got up and explained that he was just going outside to check something. It was, he stressed, nothing to worry about, which only made Tara worry a little more. When Carl returned, he looked both pleased with himself and a little puzzled.
“I need to check the plans of the house,” he said. “But I think there’s a mistake. Maybe a deliberate one. Something doesn’t add up when you consider the length of the house at ground level and the size of the attic.”
He was about to say something else when a dull thud sounded from above. It felt like someone had dropped a heavy object onto the floor. Ellie seemed the least surprised of the three. Tara asked if that was the lady. A nod. And was the lady’s name Helen York? A shrug.
“I can’t hear her all the time, the other people make so much noise. Like, when she tries to tell me her name, they all shout. But they let her say things about cheese.”
“Cheese?” Tara was baffled.
“Cheesecloth,” Ellie said, as if that explained it perfectly.
Carefully, trying to sound casual, Tara asked about the others, but Ellie became impatient, wanting to return to her animated show. Tara started to flip through Ellie’s drawings instead and soon found one that supported Carl’s theory. The mysterious lady was looking out of a window onto the Garlands below. But there were two rows of windows below her. Helen York—assuming it was her—was at the window of an attic room.
The thump from above came again. Carl got up and said he would check it out.
“No,” Tara said. “You forget who’s the ghosthunter here. You stay with Ellie.”
Acting with more confidence than she felt, she climbed the main staircase to the second floor. The room over the kitchen was hers. At first, nothing seemed different. Then she saw a bump under the duvet. It was too big to be a simple wrinkle, and she felt her heart start to pound as she walked over to the double bed. The bump was too small to be a person, even a child. She tried not to think of other things it might be and instead grabbed the corner of the duvet and threw it back.
Ellie’s cuddly panda rolled over and then lay staring up at her.
“How the hell did you get under there?” she muttered.
Tara reached out for the toy but froze when it moved. Its stubby limbs waved feebly, and it emitted a forlorn sound, somewhere between a groan and a squeak. Tara jumped back, looked around the room. Then she tentatively picked up the panda. She found no sign of any control that might make it move, but when she turned it over, it groaned again. She put it down.
“Cheap trick,” she muttered. “That you, Helen?”
She turned away from the bed to see a more impressive trick. On entering the room, she had glanced at the mirror set into the door of the old wardrobe and seen nothing unusual. Now there was writing in a bright red scrawl.
HUNGER
BURNING
LEGION
Tara felt a sudden intense chill that was not entirely down to fear. She could see her breath clouding the air. She took a couple of steps and slipped on something that rolled away under her sneaker. Bending down, she saw it was a lipstick—one of Anita’s, almost certainly, from the color. She held it up and turned slowly to look around the room again.
“Okay, Helen, if that’s you, you got my attention. And that’s the point, isn’t it? You upped your game before I even got here—did somebody mention who I was? Anita would have told Tim, that’s for sure. So maybe you know more about me than I know about you, huh?”
Another emphatic thump, again from above. A few flakes of plaster fell from the ceiling. The cuddly panda had moved again in the split second she had not been looking at it. It was seated on the straight-backed wooden chair by the bed, on top of Tara’s old sports bag.
“You’re quick, Helen—I’ll give you that. You’re showing off, maybe? You got a big repertoire of these old-time parlor tricks?”
The thump this time was far louder. Dozens of plaster flakes fell, and the light fitting swayed. The chill intensified. Tara felt goosebumps starting on her skin. Then the unnatural cold dissipated as swiftly as it had ar
isen, and she heard Carl shouting up the stairs, asking if she was all right.
“Sure,” she called back, putting the lipstick on the dressing table and picking up the panda. “I’ll be down in a second.”
Another violent impact overhead made her fearful that part of the ceiling might collapse. Plaster dust wafted down, and she closed her eyes, dodged, covered her nose and mouth. Another wave of piercing cold washed over her. And there was something else, a hint of whispered words. Shadows seemed to gather in the corners of the room, defying the summer sunlight.
“Okay, Helen,” Tara whispered. “You want it all done now, like a toddler? Okay.”
She walked to the head of the stairs and shouted down.
“Looks like we’re gonna test your theory right now, Carl—better get some tools. We’re going up to the attic via the back stairs.”
“I want to come!” Ellie called. “I want to see the lady’s room!”
Tara didn’t like the idea of the girl joining this impromptu investigation. But they could hardly leave her alone. Tara was fairly sure that she was dealing with the ghost of Helen York, and the spirit did not seem to hold any malice toward the child. But that didn’t excuse carelessness. She turned to look back at her room, where the shadows still seemed a little too deep.
“Okay, Helen,” she said. “Let’s see what you want us to see.”
She set off downstairs, feeling nervous but exhilarated. Here she was, ghost hunting, old-school. She’d read enough online to know that reputations had been made and ruined by what she was planning to do. But she was a scientist, not just some random twit obsessing over spooks. And she had defied real-life, authentic werewolves, no mean feat for anyone.
How bad could a mere haunted house be?
***
“You think going through this might stop it all—the weird stuff?” asked Carl, sizing up the wall.
They had climbed the old servants’ staircase, Ellie shivering at the cold but excited to be part of the ghost hunt. Carl had unearthed the original plans of the house on his iPad and checked the dimensions of the attic. There was missing space—not much but enough. An attic room had been sealed off at some point.
House of Whispers: Supernatural Suspense with Scary & Horrifying Monsters (Mortlake Series Book 2) Page 7