by Dean Cole
Kat made another groan. We looked down at her. Half of her face was soaked and a small puddle of urine had formed a halo around her skull.
‘I’m so sorry,’ said Ash.
Matt, shirtless, poked his head out of the room. ‘Babe, what’s going on?’
I said, ‘It’s OK. I’ll get her cleaned up.’
Ash scurried away with the guilty Pomeranian. I reached down and helped Kat to her feet. I hauled her over to Will’s door and knocked. It opened after a beat and Will was standing there, halfway through buttoning up a clean shirt. I blushed at the sight of his partially exposed chest, the smattering of dark chest hair, remembering him straddled on top of me last night.
Kat had wilted against my shoulder and was drifting into sleep, her damp cheek making a wet stain on my blazer. I offered Will an apologetic stare.
He appraised Kat before the realisation of what I was asking dawned on his face. He inhaled a patient breath and blew it out slowly, then stepped aside for us to enter.
- CHAPTER FOURTEEN -
The Man With A Hole In His Face
WHEN IT CAME to spooky, the echoey hallway and shadowy corridors of Hilderley Manor were nothing compared to the woodland that abutted its rear. So much so I kept snatching glances over my shoulder as we trudged through its hazardous undergrowth, dark trees and the hum of insects surrounding us, with just enough moonlight filtering through the twisted branches to light our way.
Thoughts of being led by a dubious cult to a secluded clearing where torture and ritual was about to take place flashed through my mind. But the members of Pluckley Ghost Hunters looked as nervous as the guests as we continued to follow Esther, the person who had taken lead on this final evening of our ghost hunting journey. She, at least, whacking branches out of the way with her torch, looked confident enough to suggest we weren’t heading into lands from which we would never return.
Where exactly she was leading us, or what she had in store for us when we got there, was still unknown. But whatever we were going to be getting up to on our final evening, it was certain to be interesting if last night’s seance was anything to go by.
I eyed my fellow guests nervously as we continued to trek. To my right Will was humming blithely and smoking, his coat swishing about his knees as he walked. On my left Matt and Ash were walking arm in arm, grave looks on their faces, as if they were heading for the gallows. Cottonball’s eyes reflected the moonlight every time it bled through the canopy and dappled his fluffy face.
Annie, walking ahead with the other ghost hunters, glanced over her shoulder. ‘Miss Brannigan didn’t feel like joining us tonight, did she not?’
‘That’s right,’ I lied. ‘She wasn’t feeling well. Migraine.’
Unable to conceal his amusement, Will leaned close to my ear and whispered, ‘She’ll have one tomorrow.’
I tried not to laugh as I pictured Kat where we’d left her, in Will’s bed, the safest place for her to sleep off the drink. Which conveniently left our room free for me and Will to carry out the plan.
Eventually we reached a clearing large enough to fit all nine of us without being so cramped you could detect if the other had washed or not. The canopy above had opened to allow a clear view of the full moon, which looked like an illuminated tarnished coin in the velvety sky as it bathed the ground in pale, otherworldly light. I looked down. The gnarly vegetation wasn’t the only hazard underfoot you had to watch out for in these woods. Dark square shapes had appeared all around us, protruding out of the ground.
Squinting through my specs, the realisation of what I was looking at slowly dawned on me. I stopped cold in my tracks. ‘Gravestones?’
‘That’s right,’ said Annie. Her breath hung white in the chill night air. ‘We’re standing on the edges of an abandoned graveyard. Dates back to the 1700s. There are graves for acres.’
You could tell the stones were that old, too. Centuries of neglect made them look more like a part of the woodland’s terrain than man-made creations, reclaimed as they were by nature, dotted between tree trunks, most of them listing and sunken into the ground, with moss and creeping plants hiding their inscriptions.
The crunch of feet on dried leaves and the smell of burning tobacco alerted me that Will had sidled up beside me. He whistled, looking down at the stones. ‘Now that is frigging creepy.’
Matt and Ash looked like they shared the same opinion. Ash, her face barely visible tucked inside her scarf, was snuggled in Matt’s arms, squeezing Cottonball protectively and staring at the gravestones as if she expected the dead to come crawling out of them at any moment. Matt, too, his olive skin giving off a slight shimmer in the bluish light, was giving them a wide berth and wearing the expression of a man who had agreed to something he was now seriously regretting.
Esther, draped in a woolly shawl, her gold hair luminescent as it caught the moonlight, was looking around herself like she’d just stumbled upon the perfect picnic spot. ‘This is it,’ she said, her large teeth gleaming through her beaming face. ‘It’s practically electric with energy.’
The ghost hunters, taking this as their cue, began setting down and unpacking the bags of equipment they had hauled into the woods on their shoulders. I glanced warily at the dark trees surrounding us. I didn’t like how they concealed the depths of the woods. Or how they appeared to whisper as an intermittent breeze rustled their almost leafless canopies. Who knew what was out there watching us?
‘What’s on the menu tonight, then?’ Will asked Giles, as the team’s leader opened a laptop he’d just placed on top of a foldable stand and started tapping one-fingered at the keyboard.
‘We’re going to try and capture some EVP.’ Catching my baffled expression, Giles added, ‘That’s Electronic Voice Phenomena, the spoken voices of the dead.’
Norman, who had half erected a tripod and was looking around for a place he might position it, shouted, ‘Cameras or not, boss?’
‘No cameras. But set up the EMF detector,’ replied Giles. He spotted Will watching what Norman was doing with interest. ‘Ordinarily we train cameras on the experiment so we can check the footage to see if anything else is responsible for the voice phenomena when we analyse the recordings. But with time constrictions and poor visibility out here we’re going to skip that.’
‘It’s a great spot for it, though. And the weather’s nice and calm.’ Carrie had materialised beside us in a duffel coat, most of her mahogany and orange streaked hair tucked inside its fur-trimmed hood. Moonlight glinted off her face piercings. She was holding the Ghostbusters type device she’d carried around the nursery room the night of the first hunt. ‘Some say this graveyard is the main reason Hilderley Manor is so haunted. But if there hasn’t been enough death under its own roof over the centuries to disprove that theory my name’s Britney Fox.’ Suddenly, as if not expecting herself to have spoken so confidently, she averted her eyes to the floor and shuffled off to join Annie and Esther, who were standing over one of the headstones, discussing what was written on its epitaph.
Giles, sitting on a box in front of the foldable table, had brought up software on the laptop. Large wavy lines like soundwaves ran across the screen in different windows, surrounded by hundreds of options and buttons.
‘That waveform software?’ Will asked, bending down to get a closer look.
‘That’s right,’ said Norman, appearing like a giant over their shoulders. The glare from the laptop’s screen made the logo on his shirt look as if it was glowing in the dark. He sipped from a can of lager then gave a loud belch.
‘Do the recordings have to be analysed on the laptop later?’
‘Nope,’ said Norman, ‘thanks to that beauty released just this year.’ A gappy grin formed a crescent in the jungle of his beard. ‘This baby gives us instant playback, and the ability to edit out unnecessary interference on the fly so we don’t have to wait to hear what the recorder captured.’
‘Yeah, it’s a life saver,’ Giles agreed. ‘And most older software altere
d the audio so much, half of the original sound got completely lost.’
‘So we’ll get to hear whatever you capture during the experiment?’ asked Will.
‘Yup,’ said Giles.
Will nodded, impressed.
After further preparations, the third night’s hunt had begun. Annie had made handwritten notes of the weather and the artificial and natural sounds of the selected area: the screech of a nocturnal animal, the croak of a frog, the gentle gush of a distant dell, Cottonball’s permanent pant, even the squeak of Ash’s leather boots. She stood watch over the group with the look of a stern headmistress, checking our arms and legs for unnecessary movements. The recorder, manned by Norman, was silently recording the sound around us, ready to be transfered into the laptop for instant playback; documentary duties had been passed to Giles, who was standing on the fringe of the group, the blinking red light giving away his location in the darkness.
Will, yawning, dipped his hand inside his coat and pulled out his cigarettes. But instantly Annie waved her hand, pointing at the recorder to indicate it would create too much noise. Reluctantly, Will stowed the cigarettes away with a roll of his eyes.
‘We know you’re here,’ Esther called out in an almost stentorian voice. ‘We know you haunt this ground and we want you to talk with us.’
We had been instructed to stay quiet, to not fidget, jostle or move around too much. But so engrossed by Esther’s words and trying to see if I could hear any ghostly responses with my own ears, I took the instruction a little too literally and stopped breathing altogether. I gasped in a lungful of air, and Will, spotting me, resisted the urge to laugh.
‘I feel a presence,’ whispered Esther. Her face brightened into a smile. ‘It’s a child.’
Everyone stayed quiet as the psychic, standing like the Virgin Mary at the helm of the group, hands held out, her hair looking like a halo it was so illuminated by the moonlight, glanced about herself, as if she was seeing invisible things moving there.
Squinting through my specs at the gravestone upon which her eyes were currently transfixed, I saw a handful of dead leaves scud across the ground. And a wispy light appeared above it, as if something invisible had briefly caught the moonlight.
‘That’s the thirty second span for replies, Norman,’ Giles shouted, looking at his watch. ‘Quick check, yeah?’
Norman tapped at the laptop’s keyboard as the rest of us waited to see what his equipment was about to reveal. Eventually audio came out of the laptop’s speakers. There was amplifier hiss and static at comfortable levels. Then a couple of garbled fragments of speech. Norman stopped the playback and clicked more buttons. The audio came back on, clearer this time. You could hear the sounds of the woods, the whisper of the trees, the hum of insects, more static, then a voice. Esther’s.
I feel a presence. It’s a child.
The sound of the woods continued to play, and then there was another noise.
Shieeseeeeezus
Everyone heard it at the same time, exchanging shocked glances.
Giles’ voice came out of the recording. That’s the thirty second span— Norman stopped the playback and did something on the screen that looked like he was rewinding the recording. He clicked more buttons and the audio played once more, this time slower, less distorted.
Sheeeeseeeeeeesusss
‘“She sees us,”’ said Norman.
And he was right. When he played the recording a third time, you could hear the words, when you broke the distorted sound into syllables, spoken in a high-pitched girl’s voice: She. Sees. Us.
The ghost hunters shared enthusiastic glances. This was clearly a very special piece of paranormal evidence they had captured. I found the phenomena incredible myself. And genuinely creepy, that slightly robotic voice hissing on the tape, all the way out here in the blackness of the woods. Even Will looked intrigued by the sound, his eyes trained attentively on the parapsychologist’s every movement.
‘Let’s continue,’ Giles instructed.
Norman reset the software and once again we stayed quiet as it began to record us. I saw Will check his watch. He cast me a glance, reminding me that we would soon have to make our excuses and head back to the house to carry out our plan. I registered the reminder with a nod and then looked at Esther, who was speaking to the ghosts again.
‘That’s right,’ she said, in the gentle, high-pitched voice you’d use with a child. ‘I see you. And you see me, don’t you? Is there anyone else there with you? What else do you see? Can you tell us?’
Again we allowed the spirits time to answer Esther’s questions, for the recording software to pick up whatever they had to say. When enough time had elapsed for them to give a response, Giles instructed Norman to let us hear if the recording had picked up any more EVP.
Norman played the tape. Again we heard the static, the background sounds of the woods. He fixed the quality once. A second time. A third time. And we listened. At first we heard Esther’s voice:
That’s right. I see you. And you see me, don’t you? Is there anyone else there with you? What else do you see? Can you tell us?
We waited. More static. More hissing. Then …
He’s there! said another voice on the tape. It was still young, the voice of a child, but less high-pitched than the first. A boy perhaps.
Where? said another voice. It was the voice from the first recording. The girl.
There! Behind the man with the round glasses.
I felt my body freeze, a sensation like icy nails raking my back. I spun round expecting to see someone standing behind me, but there was nothing there other than the blackness of the woods.
I don’t see him!
There! The man with a hole in his face.
Ash gasped. Will, looking worried suddenly, glanced behind me. A wave of terror choked me. I spun around again, expecting to see some hole-faced abomination standing there. But again there was nothing. I scanned the darkness, my senses so heightened I could hear the blood pumping through the veins in my neck. Tu-tum. Tu-tum. Tu-tum.
Seeing my terror, Will did a throat slash gesture to Giles, instructing him to pause proceedings. Giles lifted his hand, a gesture for Norman to stop what he was doing.
‘I think Quentin’s had enough. Haven’t you, mate?’ said Will. He checked his watch again. ‘We’re gonna head back inside if it’s alright with you folks. Carry on, though. Great job.’
He gripped my arm and began leading me away from the worried looking faces dotted around the moonlit circle. My eyes were flitting around, trying to find a man with a hole in his face as we walked. When we were out of earshot, I found my voice.
‘What the hell just happened?’
‘I don’t know.’ There was a very uncharacteristic note of worry in the northern accent.
‘That wasn’t fake, Will. It couldn’t be.’
He threw me a shifty glance under his eyebrows. ‘People will try anything if they’re desperate enough.’
But he couldn’t hide the doubt in his voice, that hint of dishonesty. He was just saying it to try and alleviate my anxiety.
‘Look,’ he said, his hand coming to rest on my back, ‘You’re fine. Just stay cool until we’re out of these woods.’
It would have been nice if I could have stayed calm. If I’d been able to believe him. But as we trekked back through the unruly undergrowth, towards the lights of the manor blinking at us through the trees, the only thing I believed was that something very terrifying was stalking me.
- CHAPTER FIFTEEN -
The Elephant in the Room
‘KAT’S RIGHT, THIS place is cursed,’ I said, a creeping doubt infiltrating my mind as we reached the second floor corridor. ‘Aren’t we asking for trouble messing with it?’
‘Relax, squire,’ Will, marching ahead, reassured me. ‘Don’t forget that we’re dealing with the unexplained here. Everything is speculation.’
Easy for him to say. He wasn’t the one about to offer himself up as bait to try
and snare a murderous madman. He wasn’t the one seeing ghosts around every corner. I felt like one of Stan’s rodent traps. Only, lying in that bed, I was likely to end up as dead as a rodent myself. Perhaps I would get definitive proof the afterlife existed during my stay here after all, by ending up being sent there myself.
When we got to the room, Will ordered me to wait at the threshold. He peered behind the door, got on his hands and knees to check under the bed, then double checked the corridor before allowing me inside. It was like having my own personal bodyguard. One comforting part to this blimming madness at least.
He closed the door and switched on the lights. When he turned he saw me standing at the foot of the bed, hugging my torso. I must have looked like a man picturing his own funeral because his features slackened with sympathy. ‘Nothing bad will happen to you while I’m around.’
The comforting words made me feel a little better. ‘Promise?’
‘Well, of course I can’t prom—’
‘Will!’
‘Cross my heart.’
Feeling even more pessimistic about what lay ahead, I went and sat down on my side of the bed, removing my specs to rub the tiredness out of my eyes. Will surprised me when he came over and started removing my blazer. He folded it neatly and draped it over the coffer. Then he got down on one knee. For a mad second I thought he was about to propose, until he started unlacing my shoes. I frowned.
‘What are you doing?’
‘Helping you into bed.’
‘Will, I’m twenty seven. Not five.’
Ignoring me, he removed the shoes and placed them neatly together in front of the bedside table, then lifted my legs onto the mattress. To my relief, he stopped short of tucking me in, instead walking over to the door to shed himself of his own coat. Hooking it on the back of the door, he turned and said, quite casually, ‘Want some tea?’
I crossed my arms and adopted a sullen pout. ‘Why not? If I’m going to be dead soon, I might as well enjoy a bit of comfort.’