The Dark Corners Box Set

by Robert Scott-Norton

  The corridor ran off into the distance. Seth’s torch picked out a pair of double doors at the end, small windows in each reflected his torchlight back at him, dazzling him for a moment. Motes of dust hung in the air before them, but it was impossible to tell whether they’d been disturbed by them entering or someone passing through recently.

  Judy’s torch caught the missing ceiling tiles above their heads, exposing pipework and insulation foam, like the guts of this place was being slowly pecked out. A wheelbarrow with forgotten debris lay on its side and small piles of rubble littered the floor making the passage uncomfortable to walk along.

  “I don’t like this,” Glenda whispered to her husband.

  “Don’t worry. Nothing will happen,” he replied.

  “But we saw someone.”

  “We think we did. It might have been a trick of the light.”

  “Peter, I saw him,” she said despondently.

  Seth thought Peter was doing the right thing. This would not go well if the team were gripped with an uncontrollable fear. They needed to keep clear heads. Keep busy.

  Seth handed Glenda the Dictaphone. “Describe what you saw and record it. We don’t want to forget.”

  She took the device and pressed the record button. “I don’t know what to say.”

  “Just say what you saw.”

  In the hushed corridor, Glenda spoke quietly but confidently about the face she’d seen.

  Seth counted the doors. There were four along the corridor he could make out, so he paused and jotted the number in his notebook. Judy heard him muttering and asked what he was doing.

  “I just like to keep a record of our visit.”

  “By counting doors. You’re not trying to keep a track of our escape routes are you?” She laughed nervously, and Seth nodded. “Yeah, something like that.”

  Seth shone his torch around the group, making sure it lingered long enough for him to check their faces and the space directly behind them. He gestured they should follow him to the first entrance on the right. A sign dangled overhead. This was the day room. One door to the day room was missing, the other closed.

  “Is there anyone here with us?” Arjun intoned. Alisha giggled and smacked him on the arm.

  “What’s that?” Judy said, her voice hushed.

  Something was scraping along the floor from inside the room.

  Seth held his breath. Before he could talk himself out of it, he stepped inside, the others followed. He shone his light around and took in the surroundings—empty as far as he could tell. On the wall to the right was a TV bracket, hanging loosely, the TV long gone but the aerial cable poked through a void in the ceiling tiles. A few plastic chairs had been thrown around the room haphazardly. A wheelchair sat crumpled on its own in the far-left corner. The windows in the day room were tall, stretching almost from floor to ceiling but they’d been constructed in smaller panes and half of these were now boarded. Radiators had torn away from the walls taking plaster and wallpaper with them. The lino in here was as bad as the corridor outside, torn and warped. Seth was careful where he trod.

  “Why would they leave stuff? Why wouldn’t they properly empty the place?” Alisha said in a hushed voice.

  “Too expensive isn’t it,” Arjun replied.

  Satisfied they were alone, the group spread out a little, Alisha taking an interest in the faded posters on the wall, Arjun strolled around the perimeter, shining his torch at anything that caught his attention.

  Glenda and Peter stayed close to Seth and Judy in the middle of the room.

  “So what happens now?” Glenda asked. “Are you getting anything?”

  There was something restless in the room, something that didn’t belong. Seth likened the sensation to how people described the calm before a thunderstorm. He shook his head. Nothing was clear.

  “So, what made you come here tonight?” Seth asked the pair.

  “It was Glenda’s idea,” Peter blurted. "She saw it on Facebook."

  “It was a joint decision,” she corrected. “You wanted to come just as much as me.”

  Arjun’s torchlight caught a fine crack on one wall and he let the light linger on it. Seth ran his fingers over the line, trying to feel the indentation.

  “What’s wrong?” Arjun asked.

  “Nothing,” he replied, and turned back to see Judy still focused on the older couple in the party.

  “What made you want to come?” Judy asked Glenda.

  “My aunt.”

  “Oh, has she been on one of these?”

  “No, she died when I was a girl. She was a patient.”

  An awkward pause as Judy struggled to find something comforting to say. “I’m sorry.”

  “Nothing to be sorry for. As far as I know she was well looked after. I don’t believe any of what they say happened. It was all just media hype. Part of them wanting to close the mental hospitals and cut budgets. Thatcher’s legacy I suppose. I get the impression Johnny loves the gossip because it lends itself to the macabre. Helps him sell tickets. Each to their own I suppose. But, my aunt spent a lot of her time here. I guess I wanted to see what the place is like.”

  Seth let the conversation wash over him as he concentrated on the lines in the wall. The more he stared, the more he could see. He’d become so engrossed that he didn’t notice the presence beside him until she spoke. “What are you looking at?” Judy asked.

  Seth looked at her curiously. That feeling he’d had about this woman was stronger than ever. “Look at it. What do you see?”

  Her eyes drew closer. She gazed at the markings, her nose wrinkling as she squinted. “It’s a badly drawn door, marked out in pencil it looks like. Is it important?”

  “It could be.”

  She reached out to touch the wall, Seth batted it aside. “Don’t,” he said.

  Affronted, she backed off. “Why?”

  “It wouldn’t be a good idea.”

  “You were counting doors outside in the corridor. What’s so significant about them?”

  He opened his mouth to answer when Arjun gave a startled cry from the other side of the room.

  “What’s wrong,” Alisha asked.

  “Thanks guys, you could have warned me.”

  Seth noticed the wheelchair beside Arjun. “What happened?”

  “If you were going to shift this blasted thing out of the way, you could have watched where you were rolling it. Smacked right into my ankle. I'll have a belting bruise tomorrow.”

  Judy shone her light into the far corner where they’d been standing moments earlier, the same corner where the wheelchair had been resting. That corner was now empty. Sure she’d made a mistake, she swept the rest of the room. “It was over there,” she said to Seth.

  He concurred. It was the same wheelchair, only now, it had been fully unfolded as if someone had taken a ride in it.

  “It wasn’t us,” Seth said. “We didn’t move it.”

  “You must have.” Only Arjun didn’t sound so sure.

  Seth didn’t need to say anything. They weren’t alone. Thinking it would be sensible to move on, he turned to leave.

  “Someone’s outside.” Judy had moved to the windows. The group came to stand beside her and they all found their own panes to peer through. Seth wiped at the glass, clearing some grime.

  Even from the first floor they got a good view of the hospital’s layout. The courtyard was below, encased by a wing on the left and right and a series of smaller buildings to the rear of the complex. It was a tightly enclosed space, overgrown with weeds and bushes. The dying tree in the middle, a tired sentinel keeping watch.

  Seth’s stomach tightened upon seeing the outbuildings again.

  A light came on in one of those same buildings.

  “Who’s down there?” Arjun murmured.

  “Johnny,” Peter replied. “He said he had some things to set up.”

  The optimism did nothing for Seth. He wanted Peter to be right, but suddenly, he wanted to go. Being in this p
lace was not good for him. Maybe his being here was harmful to the group’s safety.

  The cry from downstairs made them all jump.

  A man’s scream in terror for his life.

  8

  Malc guessed he’d been lying in bed for over an hour before realising that sleep wasn’t coming. He dragged himself out of bed, careful not to stir Georgia and made his way into the kitchen where he put a pan of milk on the hob and spooned some hot chocolate into his Best Dad mug.

  Georgia was distant, the gap between them so wide he wasn’t sure how to bridge it. He’d suggested prayer and despite her being of faith, she’d looked at him like he was a stranger.

  She would leave him. He knew in that deepest dark place in his heart that his marriage was not meant to be. She would one day realise that she’d made a terrible mistake in marrying him and would leave him to go and live a normal life with a normal husband who didn’t have sermons to prepare for three times a week nor a congregation to share him with. These thoughts were usually kept concealed in the dark corners of his mind, but today they were left unchecked and were driving him to distraction.

  He poured himself the hot chocolate, and mixed it up with a spoon like he was whipping the very devil from the mug. And when he had his drink ready, he took it into the TV room and sat on the armchair that looked out into the garden and set it down beside him and he stared out into the night. He didn’t bother to turn any lights on. The darkness didn’t bother him.

  And that made him think of Seth. He’d been clear enough with his friend, hadn’t he? Under no circumstances should Seth ever return to Ravenmeols. But, this morning, he’d been distracted. Had he really been paying any attention to what his friend was telling him? The promise of steady work would have been alluring. Perhaps even enough to take him back to where his sister had died.

  Tapping his fingers on his leg, he thought of what went on with these ghost hunts. He’d seen them on the television with the lady from Blue Peter and he knew this was a dangerous form of entertainment. Much as he doubted the veracity of the TV show’s investigations, he didn’t doubt that encouraging anyone to be interested in the occult was a dangerous thing. And it was evident from the rise of these horror nights in haunted buildings, that the public had gotten a taste for it.

  But Seth was good at what he did. Malc had met a few people in his time that claimed to be able to communicate with the dead and Seth was the only one he had any belief in. It was not something that a member of the church would care to talk about but he and Seth went back a long way. They’d grown up like brothers, always in and out of each other’s houses. And he still remembered the day that Seth had changed. A sadness had come over him that he would later come to realise was some form of adolescent PTSD. Seth grew up overnight but with it he’d acquired decades worth of hopelessness.

  He’d let him down once. Malc had sworn he’d never let him down again.

  From the side of the armchair, he pulled up his ageing laptop and powered it up. The glare from the screen blinded him momentarily and when he adjusted, there was a figure standing in the doorway looking at him. His son, Joe. Sleepwalking again. That was two late night visits this week and he knew he wouldn’t get used to it. Whilst Joe was sleepwalking, there was a stranger in the house.

  Malc set the laptop on the floor. “You OK, Joe?”

  “Apples in the tree. They’re taking them.”

  “Don’t worry,” Malc hushed and went over to him.

  Joe’s sleepwalking habit had started when he’d transferred from crib to full-sized bed, and now, with Joe on the cusp of turning seven, Malc would regularly find him moving around the house in the dark. He mumbled some more then headed for the sofa, climbing on and snuggling into a corner.

  “Do you know where you are?”

  “It’s unravelling. It’s all unravelling,” Joe said quietly, so quietly that Malc thought he’d misheard him.

  “What was that, Joe?”

  “Too many doors.” He shuddered suddenly like a sharp breeze had caught him, then he lay so still that Malc had to turn him slightly and check he was still breathing. He was, and there was no sign that he was in any distress, in fact his breathing was deep and steady and the hint of a smile appeared on his face.

  Malc lent behind the sofa and found the blanket they used to snuggle up under on Saturday nights and lay it gently over his son, letting the fleece drape around his shoulders before tucking it behind him carefully.

  Any mention of doors set Malc on edge. He glanced at the wall opposite the window. Joe had never acknowledged being able to see the door. Only Seth had recognised the faint outline for what it was. But at the moment, it was just a possibility. It had failed to manifest completely and that caused a problem for Seth who couldn’t get rid of it until it did. For now, it was the unwanted intruder in his house that he couldn’t do anything about. It had occurred to him that Georgia had a right to know. He’d even built up the courage to come completely clean with her one night about his work for the church and the door, but he’d bottled it and by the time he’d got his resolve back, the miscarriage had started.

  There was no way he could tell her now. She had a habit of latching on to ideas and if she knew that there was something paranormal in her house, she’d believe that it had caused her failed pregnancy. And if Malc had known about it and not told her, well, he was as good as complicit in the whole thing.

  The divorce scenario played through his mind again. Just the highlights this time, the initial argument, the taking of Joe, watching Joe grow up with a new dad.

  A ding from his laptop told him it had finished booting and he went to it again, picking it up and sitting down with it on his lap. Joe could stay there for a while whilst he worked. It would be a good idea to keep an eye on him, just until he was sure the boy was well and truly asleep and unlikely to wander again.

  Seth hadn't mentioned the name of his client but it shouldn't be too hard to find. They were the security firm in charge at the Ravenmeols site. He googled Ravenmeols and clicked on the first website. Apart from offering a brief history of the building, it didn't say much. Malc knew he could have written a more comprehensive account himself, especially of the last days.

  He tried again and this time he thought he'd gotten lucky. A ghost hunting group had mentioned Ravenmeols, but Malc quickly discovered it was only in passing in an article entitled, ‘Top ten haunted sites in the north-west’.

  Several hits later and he came across an email address to use for enquiries about the site.

  Finally, some progress.

  And he took the email address and searched for that. Two sites were returned with exact matches. The site he'd just visited and another which he clicked on.

  Oswald Security Services.

  The site was corporate and dull. According to the website, the company had been established ten years ago. There was a list of the services they offered, again, all very corporate. Malc spent five minutes on the site, looking for any details regarding the ghost hunt that Seth was working on, but he couldn't find anything. The site was nothing more than a glorified landing page, something to show up in searches.

  And there was something about it that he didn’t like. It wasn't just the brevity of information on there. The contact details page used a form to complete, there was no postal address to use. There was a phone number and carefully, so as not to disturb Joe, he fetched his mobile from the kitchen and dialled the number. It was picked up immediately by an answering machine. Nothing strange about that at this time of night.

  So what was it he didn't like?

  Malc opened a new tab and visited the domain registry index. Carefully, he typed in the website address of Oswald Security Services and clicked Search.

  And the information on screen suggested he was right to have doubts. Despite claiming to be in business for ten years, the website address had only been registered one week ago. Malc frowned. This didn't prove anything other than the domain was newly registered. B
ut the timing seemed a little too much of a coincidence—only a few days before they contacted Seth.

  Seth wouldn’t have been stupid enough to take the job, would he?

  He quickly found his friend in his contacts and called his mobile.

  Straight to voicemail. He left a message then hung up.

  Was that enough? Joe murmured in his sleep and kicked the blankets away.

  “Unravelling… Seth.”

  Malc froze at the words. If he ever wanted a sign to take more action, this must be it. He put the laptop on the floor and went to sit beside Joe on the sofa, putting a gentle hand on the boy’s side. “Shh, it’s going to be fine. Bad dreams.”

  Joe squirmed before settling again, his face tight and anxious.

  Malc lifted his phone and found a contact he hadn't had reason to use in months. Before he could second guess himself, he quickly called the number. No answer. No voicemail either. Fuming, he quickly tapped out a text message and hit send. He was going to have to do this alone.

  9

  Seth and Judy both glanced at each other. “Johnny,” they announced in unison then dashed out of the day room, Seth sweeping his torch checking they were alone. Shapes flickered around the margins of the beam. Shadows stretched out at strange angles as the torch played over them. They made it to the staircase first but after pushing the door open, Seth hesitated and let the rest of the group through. Then he hung back and let the door close. Judy waited with him.

  “What’s up?” she asked.

  There was something on one wall he hadn’t spotted on the way through earlier. An outline.

  “Why are you doing that?” Judy stood beside him, eager to go but perhaps not that eager to leave Seth behind. “Why are you obsessed with doors? Are you OCD?”

  “No. They’re important.”

  “What’s so important about doors? Why was there a drawing of one in the day room?”

  “It wasn’t a drawing. The doors can come and go. If you don’t keep your eye on them, before you know it, the place will be full of them.”