by Paul Starkey
Chalice bit her bottom lip and turned her head, very slowly, to look at drawn curtains that obscured the two windows at the back of the room.
“Stay here. Everyone.” Even as she said the words she was moving to the nearest window. Shifting the Beretta to her left hand so she could take hold of the curtain with her right, then paused. These were the only windows in the drawing room, which meant that only the final camera showed something she could verify.
She looked back. “Is it still there?”
She just about made out Tyrell, bathed in green, nodding.
Licking her lips she opened first the right, then the left the curtain and stared out. She saw the tree, saw the conservatory, saw the lawn between them where the camera showed a wolf.
The space was empty.
She turned again. “How about now?” she asked, perplexed, desperate for this to be a trick, for the camera feeds to have been tinkered with. First the mobile phone, now the CCTV. Why would anyone go to so much trouble, why won’t you just accept what’s going on, Chalice…
This time it was Cheung. He didn’t turn from the screen as he spoke. “It’s still right there on the…” now he did turn, and she saw the shock in his eyes seconds before he shouted the warning, so she was turning even as he screamed, “look out!”
The wolf was little more than a white blur until it struck the window, but then time seemed to slow, the seconds turning to treacle, and she saw its face twisted in rage, no sign of pain as its snout impacted with the glass. She saw its jaws widen, ravening drool sliding down jagged fangs, saw hate in its eyes.
Instinctively she brought up the gun and fired a shot left handed. Her arm jarred from the recoil, but despite this, and despite the fact it wasn’t her natural style, still she was bang on target. In truth at this range she could have closed her eyes and still aimed true.
The glass had already started to crack when the wolf hit, each crack branching off to two more than branched off to two more…until the glass looked like a spider’s wed. The 9mm bullet punched a hole through the middle of that web and for a moment it looked as if the glass had shattered. For an instant she felt a cool, rain laced breeze that brought with it the smell of something animal and long dead.
But then, with time still seeming sluggish, the wolf outside seemed to morph into something else, its dirty white fur becoming dirty white liquid that poured into the cracks in the glass, flowing through them until it seemed to hold the shards of the window together. As she continued to watch, paralysed by fascination, the liquid seemed to vanish, dissipating like smoke, but somehow in its passing the breaks in the glass had healed, until after a moment there was no indication that the window had ever been breached.
The Beretta was still pointed at the glass, with her right hand she reached for the window, fingers trembling as they gently touched the glass over the spot where she’d put a bullet. She didn’t know what she was expecting, for the surface to feel warm, soft to the touch maybe? The glass was cool, the glass was solid, the glass felt normal. She lifted the gun. Smoke wafted from the barrel. She felt the slight heat emanating from the discharge. She had fired…
The others were by her side now, ignoring her last command. She couldn’t say she blamed them for that.
“What the hell was that?” said Tyrell.
“I…I don’t believe it.” said Cheung.
Felix merely stared at the window. He looked like he wanted to cry.
Only Ibex seemed nonplussed. He glanced at the glass once, then turned his attention to her. Staring at her with a curious intensity that seemed to suggest he knew this was a trick, knew it was smoke and mirrors and that she was the magician behind it all.
Let him believe what he wants, she thought. I could care less.
More questions and just plain exclamations of disbelief followed, but she ignored them all. Switching the pistol back to her right hand—the useless pistol a voice in her head sang—she walked over to the door. She wasn’t surprised to find it locked.
For a moment she stood there, fingers still gripping the handle, eyes closed, resisting the urge to rest her head against the wood. She felt so tired, bone weary, and wanted nothing less than to rest, to sleep. This was a luxury she knew the house would deny her. Inwardly some tiny hidden portion of herself wondered if she would ever sleep again, if any of them would. Brendan wouldn’t, Lucy wouldn’t.
She opened her eyes when the lights came back on.
“The door’s locked?” said Tyrell.
She turned and nodded.
“We can force it?”
“No, Tom. I don’t think that’ll be necessary, I think the…I think it wants us to stay in here for now.” She looked at Felix. “And I think I know why.”
The young boy didn’t like everyone’s’ eyes on him, he flushed, eyelashes fluttering nervously as he sank back to the floor.
Chalice joined him on the floor, mirroring his crossed legged position but making sure she didn’t sit too close. She didn’t want to spook him.
She almost laughed at the thought. The kid was spooked enough already. “Felix,” she said softly. “What’s happening here tonight, I know it isn’t anything that’s happened here before, but you mentioned something earlier, you talked about your dad mentioning funny occurrences?”
“So?” his eyes danced shiftily.
From somewhere deep within her she dredged up a smile. “So, I think knowing what those things are might help us understand what’s going on with this house tonight.” She paused. “And what it might have planned for us next.”
Chapter thirty six
Maybe I’m imagining all this, maybe this is all just crazy dream my poor mangled mind has created. Maybe I’m safe at home and soon I’ll wake up. I’ll forget to put the dishes in the right cupboard and that scruffy stray cat that keeps coming round will turn up meowing at my back door and I’ll give her some scraps like I do every day. I’ll be bored, depressed, scared of every little shadow. But at least I’ll be safe.
Somehow John Tyrell knew that what was going on here tonight was all too real. Brendan and Lucy were dead, and by the time the sun rose they all might join them.
Felix had agreed to tell them what he knew. For a moment Tyrell had worried that Chalice intended them all to sit down on the floor along with her and the boy. He’d been afraid that if he did this he wouldn’t be able to get back up again; the urge would have been too great to just lie back and sleep. He was amazed he was still awake.
To be honest sitting at the table wasn’t much better. The temptation to rest his head against the table top was strong, but luckily the table held something to remind him of the necessity to stay awake. The drinks Lucy had made earlier (poisoned earlier) were still there. The liquid inside the cups had long cooled, but the invisible drug within still provided a warning.
If I hadn’t woken when I did, if I hadn’t…if I hadn’t figured it out; of course I should have figured it out sooner but... For god’s sake John, give yourself some credit for once. He fought a smile. It had been a long time since he’d felt pride in much of anything. If nothing else this house, this night, had given him some semblance of that back. He might not be anything like the man he’d once been, but he was a smidgen more of that man than he’d been before Sir George knocked on his door.
Absently he wondered if he’d be able to thank the wolf before it contrived his death.
“There isn’t much to tell really…” Felix was sat, incongruously, at the head of the table. It was as if he was chairman of the board in some mixed up universe where the surly teenagers were in charge and the adults were subservient. Then again, from what Tyrell had seen of the 21st Century that wasn’t too wide of the mark.
“Anything might help,” said Chalice trying to egg him on.
She was to Felix’s left, Ibex to his right. Tyrell guessed that she was keen to keep the American opposite her. Tyrell was the other side of Quintus, with Cheung facing him.
It wasn’t a comfortable position. He didn�
�t like being this close to Ibex, and even the comforting blackness of the small SIG on the table before him didn’t make him feel any better.
Plus he didn’t like having the window the phantom wolf had tried to smash through behind him; the urge to keep looking over his shoulder was almost palpable.
Finally, and most curiously of all, he didn’t like looking at the back of the green leather chair that was facing away from him. There was nobody else in the room but he couldn’t shake the feeling that someone was sitting there, out of sight, smiling malevolently while he listened to them waste their time.
He tried to shake the thoughts away and concentrate on Felix. The young man was still prevaricating, eyes focussed on a pen that he was twirling between his fingers.
“Felix.” Chalice’s tone had got slightly sharper, it was a curt reminder to the boy that she wasn’t someone to be messed with.
He got the message. He dropped the pen and looked up, careful to avoid any of their gazes, instead he looked at the far wall, a picture of a younger Felix and his parents hung there.
“Look, just so you know, I never, ever, experienced anything funny in this house, and I was ten when we moved in.” He chanced a glance at Chalice. “This is just what my dad says he…” He paused, licked dry looking lips. “Experienced,” he finished, obviously uncomfortable with the word.
“Understood,” said Chalice.
Eyes directed back to the wall, Felix carried on.
“It began about eighteen months ago. The funny stuff I mean.”
Tyrell saw Chalice’s brow furrow, but she was professional enough that the worry didn’t linger for long, and in a moment it was as if it had never been there at all, not even a ghost remaining.
“Dad says he always felt there was something a bit iffy about the house. Doors seemed to open themselves while you weren’t looking; little items seemed to go missing.” Felix smiled. “Of course mum just said it was dad losing things, dad forgetting he’d left a door open.” The smile faded and sadness creased the edges of his young eyes. He missed his parents, Tyrell knew. Hell he sympathised, he missed his too.
“So what happened eighteen months ago?” asked Chalice.
Felix shrugged. “Dreams. I mean for my dad and…and my mum as well.” He regarded Chalice with knowing eyes. “You know what my mum’s like though, she never admitted it, but in hindsight it was obvious that neither of them had been sleeping well.”
“But you didn’t have these dreams?”
Ibex interjecting took them all by surprise, especially Felix. He actually looked towards Chalice as if seeking permission to answer the slightly odd American. She smiled, nodded.
“No. Never.”
Ibex nodded to himself but said nothing more.
“So, these dreams that your parents were having, what form did they take?”
He glanced back at Chalice. “Well at first they were kinda banal, just recurring. Must have been four or five morning’s running that dad came down to breakfast looking bleary eyed and saying he kept dreaming about this house, only in the past. Mum blamed the historical novel he was reading I think, but that was set in medieval times, dad kept dreaming about more recent events. Said he was at some flapper’s dance or something.” He looked around. “Held in this room I think.” He fidgeted. “I didn’t know what a flapper was at the time.” He flushed.
“That’s ok, Felix. When I was your age I didn’t have much interest in history either,” said Chalice, coaxing him on. “Knowing your dad I bet he started to research the history of the house, right?”
Felix nodded furiously. “Yeah. Mum said he was nuts but…”
“But?”
“But she didn’t nag him about it, I mean not like she normally would.”
Tyrell was getting the distinct impression that Antonia Carmichael was a bit of a battle-axe.
“Is that when you started to wonder if she was having the dreams too?”
“Yeah, a few weeks later and I knew for sure, because the dreams started to get worse; for both of them.”
Chalice rubbed her palms together. It was definitely colder in here, Tyrell thought, and were the lights fading, just a fraction?
“You’re sure?”
He nodded again, eyes wide now. “God yes, hearing your mother scream in the middle of the night isn’t something you forget.”
“Not just dreams anymore,” said Tyrell. “Nightmares?”
“That’s putting it mildly. For a few days they didn’t tell me anything, but after about three really quiet breakfasts where you could have cut the air with a knife, dad asked me if I’d had any bad dreams?
“Mum left the room, like I said she never acknowledged something funny was going on, but she was accepting enough to let dad investigate further. I asked him if he was still having dreams about the 1920s and stuff. He said he was but that they’d got more vivid, and there were other dreams now, still from the past but from further back. Worse ones. He wouldn’t tell me any more but asked me to let him know if I had any dreams.”
“Did he ever tell you specifics about the dreams?” said Cheung.
Tyrell fought a smile. They were all interrogating the poor kid now. He’d been in enough debriefs to know this might help, it kept the subject off guard, they were more likely to let something slip. Of course he doubted the kid was keeping anything from them, but there might be things he didn’t fully remember, or events he didn’t think were relevant that might be. When it came to a situation like this information overload might save their lives.
Felix scrunched his eyes up, a combination of tiredness and a healthy dose of fear was probably making him have to concentrate harder to remember stuff. That could help too.
“He did eventually, but in a roundabout way, and it was after the dreams stopped.”
“The nightmares just ended?” Said Chalice.
Felix nodded. “About six months after they began.” He shrugged. “Well mostly. From time to time I still see one of them looking tired or gaunt in a morning, but it’s rare now. I don’t know why the dreams faded. Neither do they, though I heard mum tell my dad once that it was obviously all down to stress for the pair of them.”
“I’m not sure about that,” said Cheung leaning in. He explained about the psychic magazine with the hellhound on the cover, the magazine with an address sticker with Antonia’s name on it.
Felix didn’t seem offended. “My mum’s not one for being open and honest all the time,” he said.
“Still, I wonder why the dreams faded,” said Chalice.
Ibex was smirking. “Maybe the wolf got bored with them.”
Chalice ignored him, focused instead back on Felix. “What did your father tell you about the dreams?”
“Right. Well he started investigating the history of White Wolf House, never did find out why it’s called that though, although he suspected it was an old name—this house was built just before the Civil War.” He smiled “Roundheads and all that—dad said it was pretty certain there was another White Wolf House here before hand. Anyway he discovered that in 1925 there was a double murder here.” He frowned. “Well it might have been, might have been suicide. The police weren’t ever able to solve it. Dad showed me the newspaper clippings he’d found, and an old book he tracked down told the story in more detail…”
The bump wasn’t especially loud, but the room had grown so quiet that it was hard to miss. As one they all turned to look towards the bookcase.
Felix had grown paler. Tyrell felt his pain, it really hadn’t been much of a noise but still his heart was racing. Nobody moved for a moment, then Chalice stood. She took a step towards the other end of the room, paused for a moment to look down at the Beretta on the table, then at the Uzi propped up against the wall by the TV, then she strode with purpose towards the shelves, and the mess of books on the floor. Kneeling she picked up a few, putting each of them down against straight away.
“Don’t suppose you remember what this book was…ah, hang on.” She
stood. When she turned to look back at them she was holding a slim volume. “Murder Most Foul?”
“Yeah. That’s the one.”
Chalice came back to the table, flicking through the book as she went. “Published in 1935,” she said absently. “Can’t be that foul then.”
“Don’t be so sure,” said Felix.
Chalice stared at him but said nothing. Instead she returned to the book, flicking through until she found what she was looking for. “Double mystery at White Wolf House that became threefold,” she read.
“Catchy title,” said Tyrell.
As she sat down Chalice let her gaze alight on Tyrell for a moment, he resisted the urge to laugh because she looked like a librarian peering over the pages of the book.
Her moment of annoyance passed and she returned to the book. “Police were called to the manorial named White Wolf House by the servants of Camilla and Archibald Sissmore-Jones on Christmas Day morning 1925.
“The Sissmore-Joneses were wealthy city dwellers who had recently retired to the countryside after the sale of Archibald’s factory in…” Chalice shook her head and frowned as she continued to read silently, her eyes dancing across the page. “I’m not leaving anything pertinent out but this is all extraneous detail about their lives before they came here and…ah, here we go.
“It was a bleak Christmas for the family because police discovered…” Chalice turned the page. “the naked and dead body of Camilla lying on the marital bed, and it is here that the mystery began, for Camilla Sissmore-Jones had been murdered, or so it appeared, by being slashed with a knife or some other such implement. Though she died of exsanguination, the white sheet upon which she lay was barely blemished, and not a spot of blood was found anywhere around the room. There was also no sign of her husband.
“The serving girl who discovered the body remained hysterical for several days, and in truth never fully recovered, but when she was well enough to at least speak, nothing she could say threw any light upon the grisly tableau.”
Ibex chuckled. “Talk about purple prose.”