The Dark Corners Box Set

by Robert Scott-Norton

  Inside the box, on the very top, was a notebook. A plain black moleskine. Phil had used these every day of his working life. He never completely trusted gadgets to record his appointments or his notes, so notebooks became very much an extension of him. A habit he said he’d picked up from his dad.

  Her fingers brushed against the cover and a tingle ran across her spine. It had been a while since she’d touched anything so personal to her husband.

  A creak from the ladder made her catch her breath. “Jemma, are you coming up?”

  No reply. Judy stood, almost knocking her head on one of the overhead joists, then stood to peer over the edge. There was no one there.

  A whisper across the back of her neck made her spin around. What was that by the far wall? A shadow? The shadow moved and Judy almost fell down the loft opening in her haste to move away.

  But it was nothing. Just shadows as she got in the way of the loft’s single light bulb.

  Stop overreacting.

  Settling back down again, she flicked open the notebook. It was his most recent.

  The dates were neatly recorded on the top line of each page in his tiny black handwriting. Looked like he was using this as a diary with his appointments for the day. Working for his dad, he had a lot of appointments to show clients around letting properties, but he was also involved in managing renovation projects on newly acquired properties.

  She flicked through the pages, curious as to this part of Phil’s life that she never had a chance to investigate. Then she saw the comments under a heading called ‘Reflections’.

  Dad was being an arse with me again. Called me a dickhead in front of the rest of the office.

  Then a few days later.

  Surprised to find Hampton Street listed in an old ledger. I thought we’d got rid of those rentals years ago and couldn’t see any record of any rentals. Asked Dad about it and he screamed at me like I’d just scratched his car. Furious that I’d gone through his filing cabinet. Seriously, I don’t know why I carry on with his shit.

  Judy’s stomach dropped, and she wanted to sit down and take it in. She’d always suspected Adrian treated Phil badly, but they never spoke about it. This was an insight into her dead husband’s mind, and she wasn’t sure she liked what she was reading.

  She thought about putting the book back and forgetting about his notebooks. That’s not what she was looking for, she was after paperwork relating to the adoption. Something that she could pass onto Lisa. But she flicked through, not able to stop herself. She found the blank pages at the end and flicked through the week before.

  Then her heart shuddered at the words she’d caught in his reflections paragraph.

  The woman was in my room again tonight. I think she wants me dead.

  17

  Judy had brought Phil’s box from the loft and into the kitchen. Jemma hadn’t shifted from her Xbox game and despite that making it a couple of hours play, Judy didn’t feel the need to ask her to take a break. She didn’t want Jemma to see her dad’s stuff, not until Judy had had the chance to go through it and filter away anything she thought might caught upset.

  The woman was in my room again tonight.

  That line bothered her the most. It was bizarre to think he might be talking about the same thing Lisa was experiencing at her house, but it almost made perfect sense at the same time. How long had this been going on? And how many nights had she spent in the same bed as him when he was scared by this thing haunting him?

  And he never ever said a word to her about it.

  Was that just like Phil, keeping his feelings to himself until it suited him? No one knew her husband like she did. Not his parents, not his twin sister. But now it seemed that she didn’t know him as well as she thought she did.

  After making a drink, she took the book out from the box and sat down, taking more time to read through the contents. The book covered a little under six months, from the last year of his life, the period before he gave up because of his cancer. She found only one reference to his terminal condition. The 7th May, a note:

  Cancer. Crap.

  And a week later, the entries stopped completely. She continued looking and found another two entries relating to the woman in the bedroom. Both were factual, neither revealing what he might have experienced or how he felt about things. The first read:

  She watched me from the end of the bed. She didn’t move. We stared each other out. Then I fell asleep again.

  The second read:

  I saw her in the early evening. I’d come out of the shower and she was there in the bathroom mirror. I dropped my shaving mirror and cut myself on the glass.

  Judy remembered that evening. Phil had been getting ready to go out with his running club and had come down looking for plasters in the first aid box, getting irritated when the only ones he could find had Fortnite characters on them. That almost escalated to a row but Peter, his running buddy rang the doorbell and distracted him. Upstairs in the bathroom, he’d left the broken mirror by the sink. The useless oaf hadn’t even bothered to tidy it away, not minding that Judy or Jemma could have cut themselves on the glass. And had she felt something that evening? Even knowing that Phil had left the house, there had been a pressure, a weight on her mind that she couldn’t quite nail down. Like the idle worry of going shopping and not remembering the last thing on the shopping list, the thing that had driven you to go shopping in the first place. That bathroom should have still been warm with the steam from the near-scalding showers that Phil liked to take. There was mist still on the bathroom mirrors built into the medicine cabinet. And the windows were closed despite it helping to get rid of the inevitable condensation that would form.

  It had been freezing.

  Judy had picked up the broken pieces of mirror and wrapped them as carefully as she could in folded toilet tissue, before depositing them in the bathroom bin. Only, she hadn’t been careful enough as she’d cut her finger on the edge of one of the shards where a thin sliver of crimson appeared. And when she’d sucked the blood from her finger and taken a fresh sheet of toilet paper to stem the blood, hadn’t there been a moment when she’d convinced herself she wasn’t alone? Hadn’t she called out to Jemma, thinking that she must have just walked past the open bathroom door?

  Whatever had happened in that room, she’d dismissed it and never mentioned it to Phil or Jemma.

  How many other times had she almost caught sight of something out of the corner of her eye? Or heard a noise from one room in the house, thinking it had been Jemma, only to discover that Jemma had been in another part of the house entirely?

  She put down the journal. She didn’t want to see anymore. Was her house haunted?

  The doorbell rang.

  Malc was standing there with a concerned look. “Can I come in?”

  He refused a drink, but Judy took some biscuits out the cupboard anyway. She needed some sugar after going through Phil’s notebook—a little bit of a pick me up.

  “How’s things?” she asked.

  “They’ve been better,” he admitted. “Georgia has been keeping her distance from me this week. She cancelled my time with Joe. Said she had too much on and Joe was getting upset with all the toing and froing. I told her that he could stay at the vicarage for a couple of nights and I’d drop him at school on Monday morning but that didn’t go down well at all. She is becoming a complete test.”

  “She probably didn’t want him in the vicarage. Truth be told, it gives me the creeps going there knowing what happened. From her point of view, it makes total sense to keep away.”

  “But it will never go away.” He scratched his eyebrow. “I’ve thought of leaving the area, starting again with Georgia. Ask to be transferred to a new parish.”

  “Do you think that will make any difference?”

  He shrugged and she could see the tiredness there. The lazy movement that reminded her of an older man. “Maybe.”

  “I don’t think it’s the vicarage that’s the problem. You were k
eeping a pretty big secret from her for most of your marriage.”

  “I did that to protect her.”

  “I guess we all find reasons why we keep things secret. The other party doesn’t want to hear excuses though. They just want things back to how they were with the secrets excised from memory.”

  It was then that Malc seemed to consider the box on the table and gestured. “I’ve interrupted you.”

  “Just some of Phil’s things. I found it in the loft.” And then she wondered how much she should share with Malc. It was personal, but it was in his specialist subject and whilst she thought she knew what she was doing, her experience at Lisa’s house showed that she didn’t know half as much as she thought she did.

  Carefully, she took out Phil’s notebook and passed it to Malc, who took it surprised. “And you’re showing me this because?”

  “Phil always kept his notebooks. When he worked for his dad at the letting company, he used them for appointments and observations about the day. I’d never seen inside them before.”

  Malc raised an eyebrow. “Until today.”

  “Uh-huh, that’s right. I wanted to see whether he had anything related to his adoption. Something that I could pass onto Lisa that might help her find her birth parents.”

  “What did you find?”

  She shook her head. “I didn’t even get that far. I brought it down out of the loft when I read some things I didn’t much like.” She leaned across and flicked through to the notebook pages she’d folded the topmost corners on. Handy bookmarks so she could remind herself she hadn’t been dreaming. She told Malc to read each of the notes on the three pages she’d marked and then watched his expression as he did so.

  He looked up at her when he’d finished. “Was he recording his dreams?”

  “No. Not the type. Too pragmatic for that. These things happened to him.” And she told him about the time in the bathroom when she’d been convinced she hadn’t been alone.

  “Do you think maybe you’ve got a little too caught up in your sister-in-law’s problems?”

  “I saw something at Lisa’s house as well. And earlier, when I was in the loft, I don’t think I was alone.”

  His face pinched in alarm. “Not shadowmen?”

  But she had already anticipated his question and was shaking her head. “No. Not at all. I’ve felt a presence in this house several times, but I’ve always put it down to stress or an over active imagination. Malc, I think Phil was haunted by the same entity that’s haunting his sister now. I think it might be haunting us both.”

  If she’d expected Malc to leap to his feet and jump to her rescue, perhaps grabbing a bottle of holy water and a bible before blessing the house, she was disappointed.

  “You think your house is haunted?”

  “Do you?”

  He shook his head. “I’m sorry, but I’m not feeling anything unusual here. What about Jemma?”

  “I’m sure as hell not going to mention any of this to Jemma.”

  “You don’t have to tell her what you’ve told me. Ask her if she’s seen anything odd.”

  She thought about it. “After what we’ve been through, there is no way I could broach the subject and not have her freak out on me. It was problematic enough getting her back here after last time.”

  “But, if she’d experienced anything unusual, she’d have told you?”

  There was a long pause, then Judy said, “Yes, I suppose she would.”

  “And she hasn’t.”

  “No, she hasn’t.”

  Malc put the notebook back on top of the collection of papers then stood as if to leave. But he wasn’t about to leave. He’d come around for a reason and it wasn’t to moan about his wife. There was something else going on here. Should she nudge him or let him broach what was troubling him in his own time?

  “I don’t suppose you’ve heard from Seth?”

  The question surprised her. Not so much that it was about Seth, but because of what it implied. Something’s happened, she thought, and you’re worried about your friend.

  “Not a peep. I’d ask you the same but I’m guessing you haven’t either.”

  “It’s probably nothing. Just unusual for him to remain out of contact.”

  “Do you think he’s OK?”

  “He’s working for Vigilance. I’m hopeful they’ll be looking after him.”

  “Hopeful isn’t resounding reassurance.”

  He looked at her and slipped a hand into his pocket, fetching his car keys. “I’ll drop by the house. The collection needs him.”

  The collection. A dangerous basement full of occult artefacts that Seth’s uncle had collected over most of the later part of his life. The entire collection was bequeathed to Seth when his uncle died but since Seth had been in contact with the Vigilance Society, the responsibility for looking after the artefacts should have been shared between them and Seth.

  Judy had dropped by several times at his house and had yet to find Seth there. Usually an officious guy would answer the door and claim that Seth wasn’t at home, but he’d relay a message. She’d taken the hint after a few wasted trips and followed up with Seth with a few angry text messages. The replies came but had become shorter and less meaningful.

  Judy told Malc all of this, and he listened and looked thoughtful, then his face crumpled in concern.

  “You’re still in contact with him though?”

  “I guess so, barely,” she answered, although a dark thought had crept into her mind. What if those messages weren’t even coming from him?

  18

  “There’s someone to see you.” Meg from reception said, her voice full of the Monday sadness that usually surrounded the girl. She was probably on minimum wage and yet still managed to get hammered every single weekend. If you were foolish enough to stop and shoot the breeze with her on a Monday morning, she would hit you with every story.

  Lisa had avoided that today and had slunk into work feeling dreadful and empty at the same time. It was as if her insides had been scooped out and she’d been left with a shell of a human to animate and play house in. She hated this feeling. She hated the weird atmosphere that had developed between her and Ellis, and worst of all she was hating herself again. Previous bouts of depression had taken her months to come around from. She’d only been on a reduced dose of Setraline for the last three months and that had been against her doctor’s advice. She’d threatened her that if she didn’t reduce the dosage she was going to reduce the dosage herself and see where that would end.

  Lisa knew full well where it would end, and she did not want to get readmitted to the sad farm again. Once was quite enough. Enough with the quietly spoken nurses and doctors who always wanted the best for you and wanted you to share your feelings. But then the pills would come around and the group therapy sessions would be encouraged, and before you knew it, you were acclimatised.

  Lisa didn’t want to be acclimatised ever again.

  The person waiting for her was her dad. Her first thought was that something bad had happened to Mum. His sad eyes glanced at her when she entered reception before fixating once again on the envelope in his hand. Her second thought was that he was here to apologise for his short behaviour at the restaurant.

  “Hi, I was passing, thought I’d drop in.”

  “It’s a little early for me to take a lunch break, but if you want to grab a coffee?”

  She hugged him and the embrace was good. In that precious few seconds, she was safe again.

  Downstairs, there was a decent coffee shop that the other offices in the building all shared.

  “I’ll just fetch my pass.”

  Ellis spotted her as she was heading back out and she told him she had a quick errand to run but would take it out of her lunch. He spotted her dad in the reception area, leaning against the reception desk, talking to Meg and he raised an eyebrow. “Take your time.”

  Lisa’s dad paid for the drinks, and he even bought her a huge slice of cheesecake whilst abst
aining like she was some baby who needed treating. It all stunk of something not being right between them.

  It could be an apology, she thought. But when had he ever last apologised for anything?

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  And there it was.

  “Sorry?”

  “You’re going to make me spell it out, aren’t you? I can’t say I blame you. I know I wasn’t especially nice to you at dinner and that it must have been a big deal for you to want to talk about it.” He picked up a sachet of sugar and ripped off the end before upending it into his black Americano. “I’m sorry I made it awkward for you. If I could turn back time, I would.”

  He looked up at her, searching for something in her expression, but she was careful not to give anything away.

  “You’ve nothing to apologise for.” Apart from humiliating me in front of Phil’s wife and my niece. Neither of whom will look at me again without pity in their eyes for as long as they live.

  “You’re being polite, and I appreciate that, but you’ve got to let me take the blame for this. I hate that this has become a thing between us,” he pressed.

  “This thing is a big deal for me.”

  “Yes. I know.”

  “I don’t want to upset you or Mum.”

  “I know that too.”

  “And you should know that I will continue looking for my birth parents with or without your help.”

  He shifted his weight on the chair and adjusted his tie. Why did he wear a tie to work when he owned the business? If Lisa ever got her own digital marketing company, she would ensure that everyone felt comfortable in what they wore. The tie was just another attempt at keeping authority pressing down on his employees. Besides, it was a ghastly tie. Mum must have bought it.

  “And you’re right to do that. It’s what I would do if I was in your position.”

  “Right. So, we’re agreed then, that I should continue looking?” Damnit, why did that slip out? She would not ask for his permission.