“Counselling?” He shrugged, then raised his hands in a placating gesture. “Hear me out, I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with Jemma, but if she suffers from anxiety, it might help. You told me it’s not long since her dad died. She’s still going through the grieving process. Who knows what her mind might do?”
“She doesn’t need counselling. But you didn’t answer my question.”
“I know.”
“So, what do you believe?”
“I doubt the existence of ghosts. I used to believe in them as a boy, but then I grew up and realised that there is always an explanation.”
“I told you I thought I saw something in the loft. I think it’s always been there—been in our house. My husband saw it. I read it in one of his journals. I know that when I’m in the house on my own, there is a presence, and it’s only been the last few weeks that I appreciate that feeling for what it is. Do you remember the fire at the old hospital last October? Ravenmeols?”
He nodded. “Vaguely. Why?”
“I was there. I’d gone there on the promise of a night of ghost hunting, only the organisers weren’t interested in ghost hunting. They were the remnants of a decades’ old cult that wanted host bodies for the souls of their departed brothers. They travel to this living realm through portals that manifest like doorways and once here they look like terrible shadow creatures. They can kill you or they can possess you. I think death would be the preferred option.”
She paused, took a bite of her doughnut and watched his expression. His eyes had narrowed, and he looked like a teacher whose unruly pupil had crossed the line. It had felt good telling Richard the truth. Or part of the truth. There would be nothing to be gained from over-sharing. If he wasn’t scared off by what she’d already told him, she’d consider sharing more. She wasn’t yet sure whether she’d try to laugh it off as a joke if he dismissed the story.
Richard picked up his remaining half of doughnut and got off his chair to pace around the shop. A blob of custard dripped onto his tie, and with his spare hand, he wiped it away, or tried to, instead leaving a smear that would require the tie going in the wash.
“I want to think you’re making this up, but I can’t imagine why you’d be doing that.”
“I’m not making it up.”
“Then you’re either deluded or you’re sincere.”
“Do I look deluded?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know what a deluded person looks like.”
“What does your gut tell you?”
He paused by the doorway, then turned over the shop sign so it said closed. “My gut is telling me we should get a drink.”
“It’s not even lunchtime.”
“Look what you’ve driven me to,” he said, and a hesitant smile flittered upon his face, then left just as quickly. “But I’m pretty sure it’s the only way to sort this out.”
They headed to the Wetherspoons on the corner of Lord Street. Despite Judy’s misgivings over drinking at this time were eased once they stepped inside and she saw others eating brunch with a pint. There really was no helping people.
Who are you to judge? she thought. You’re no better than anyone else here. Drinking to forget.
They chose a table by the window, as far away from the diners as they could, but the table hadn’t been cleared and still had abandoned plates with scraps. Whilst Richard fetched them both a drink, she slid the plates onto the next table and wiped away some spilt baked bean juice with a spare tissue from her bag.
After Richard sat down, she thought he looked less shocked than he had in the office. The ten minutes had been good for him.
“So, do you want to tell me anything else?”
“There’s lots of stuff. How much do you want to know?”
“When did you first see anything you couldn’t explain?”
“Start with a hard question then,” she said, then smiled. “I suppose there’s always been things I’ve not been able to explain, but I’ve always dismissed them. Either I’d had a long day and the noise I’d heard upstairs was the creaking of the house expanding after the heating had been turned on. Or the figure at the corner of my eye was a shadow. But, the first time I’d seen something unexplainable was the first time I’d seen an Almost Door.”
“An Almost Door? These are those… portals.”
She nodded; her face felt hot like she was on the verge of blushing. “I saw the outline of a door at Ravenmeols. A man I was with, Seth, a medium, told me what they were.”
“That they’re doorways to this other place with the cult people?”
“They’re doorways to the Almost Realm. But it’s not just people from the cult. It’s like a limbo, a place the lost go to before moving on to their better place.”
“And they were just in the hospital?”
Judy glanced up and scanned across the pub. It was difficult to know for sure, she’d never been in here until today, and the doors always did their best to blend in with their surroundings. It was like camouflage, difficult to notice them unless you were looking for them.
“What are you doing?” Richard asked, turning around, trying to spot what Judy was looking at.
“They can be anywhere. I guess it depends on how thin the connections are between our realm and the other place.” She laughed. “I don’t know to be sure. But I’ve seen them outside the hospital.”
“How would I know if I’d seen one?”
She eyed him curiously. The initial scepticism had waned somewhat. Incredulously, he didn’t think she was barking mad.
“I don’t think everyone can see them. Seth is a medium. He’s been able to see them since he was a boy. I’ve been able to see them since Seth pointed them out to me. I think I’ve got the same abilities as Seth.”
“That you’re what? A medium?”
“For my sins.”
Richard lifted his pint, but it never reached his lips. He settled it down again. “A medium” he repeated, “like you can talk to the dead?”
“I can’t say I’ve tried, but it would explain a lot of things. About how I’m sensing things, seeing this ghost woman. Hearing things in my house.”
She brought out the voice recorder she’d secreted in Jemma’s room. It was all cued up ready to go. “And there’s this. I left this in Jemma’s room the other night.”
“Last night?” He raised an eyebrow. “Have you listened to it yet?”
She nodded. “Oh yes. You might be surprised.” She put her finger on the play button, but he put his hand on hers.
“Wait.”
“What’s up?”
“What are we going to hear?”
“You’re having doubts?”
He removed his hand and then took a sip from his pint. “No. No doubts. Let’s listen.”
She pressed play but the background noise in the bar was too loud. She whacked the volume up to its maximum setting, it beeped to let her know she’d reached it, then she set it down on the table between them.
Judy had prepared the playback so it would reach the point she’d listened to within a minute, and she kept flicking her gaze between the LED display with its time display, and Richard’s expression. He was focused on listening to the recording. His eyes never leaving the recorder. And then it got to the good bit.
“Go back to sleep,” the voice said.
Richard jerked back as if the thing speaking had been right in front of his face rather than a recording. She paused the playback then leaned back in her chair and waited for a reaction.
Eventually, Richard spoke. “What was that?”
“When did you record that?”
“Last night. In Jemma’s bedroom, like I said.”
“This wasn’t the TV or a YouTube video? You’re not having me on?”
“Why would I try to trick you?”
He shrugged then picked the recorder up. “Mind if I play it again?”
“Play it as many times as you need.”
So he did, and they listene
d to the words again and again. Judy caught a couple on a table give them an irritated glance, but she ignored them. This was too important to worry about bothering other people.
“Has Jemma heard it?”
Judy shook her head, aghast at the thought of her daughter hearing that voice again. “If she heard that recording, I don’t think she’d set foot in our house ever again.”
Richard frowned. “There’s something else you’re not telling me. She’s happy to go back into the house after seeing a ghost in her room, but she’d freak out if she heard the voice on the tape.”
Judy didn’t feel the need to correct him that there was no tape. Instead, she let him have the final piece she’d been keeping from him.
“When my husband used to come back home after a drinking session and wanted to take his frustrations out on me, that’s what he’d say to Jemma if she ever woke up. That’s not his voice, but it’s just so familiar it’s uncanny. I’m prepared to put up with a lot, but if the thing haunting my house is going to taunt us like that, then we’re not staying there a day longer than we have to.”
Richard had put his hand on hers and she was grateful for the warmth and comfort in the gesture. He squeezed tightly.
“You don’t need to be scared. I’m here for you.”
But who will be there for me when I go back to my house tonight? The first night since the incidents began when I’ve been in the house on my own?
As if reading her mind, he said, “If you like, I could always come around again tonight.” Then he held his hands up. “No funny business. I’ll sleep in the spare room again.”
She sniffed, then took a napkin from the dispenser on the table and used it to wipe her tears then her nose. “No funny business? Where would the fun be in that?”
He smiled, and she wondered how she had got so lucky. She’d shared all her fears and truths with this man she’d barely known for a week and yet she felt like she’d never been able to trust someone so much in all her life.
He doesn’t know everything though does he?
Their conversation was interrupted when a woman stopped by their table and put a hand on Richard's shoulder.
"Hi, long time no see."
"Oh, hi Caroline." Richard seemed to almost flinch from the woman.
"I almost missed you," she said. "Still running?"
"Yeah, not as much. Tore a ligament a few months back. Only getting back into it now."
"You need to come back to the Easy Striders. There are loads of new faces now."
"Will do. When I can keep up." He grinned, but there was a nervousness behind the smile.
What are so afraid of? Judy wondered.
"Not been the same without you and Sam."
His eyes narrowed. "I'll be there soon. Just need to get my legs back."
Caroline frowned, taking in Judy for the first time. "Well, best be going. Nigel's waiting. Promised him a quick breakfast before a bit of shopping. Only way I can tempt him out." She patted Richard on the shoulder again, then to Judy she said, "Nice to meet you."
Judy watched as she left, meeting a man outside, presumably Nigel, before heading off along Lord Street. Judy didn't miss the sly backwards glance she gave to Richard. Did she then say something to Nigel? Judy had a distinct impression they had become the subject of gossip.
"Who was that?" Judy asked.
"Someone from the running group. Not seen her in ages."
"I figured. I never had you down for a runner. What else don't I know about you?"
He smiled. “Plenty. But there’s no rush is there?”
Richard’s phone rang, and he checked the screen before dismissing it. “Client,” he explained. “I suppose we better get going.”
As they stood to leave, Judy couldn’t help but feel like she’d been lied to. Call that a gift after living with Phil for so many years. She could always spot a lie. But what was Richard hiding from her?
32
Richard closed the shop door and threw his jacket on the coat stand. The morning had been an interesting one, almost ruined by bumping into Caroline in the restaurant. That was a little too close for comfort.
He checked his phone for messages but there had been no more. He’d never planned on hooking up with another woman and the guilt ate away at him like a rotting tooth. Was Caroline likely to see Hannah and if she did, was she likely to mention that she’d seen Richard out with another woman? Damn. When did life get so tricky?
Judy had seemed suspicious, and he didn’t blame her but thought that with all the attention on the recording, she was unlikely to focus on it.
And that voice recording was something else wasn’t it? He’d been in the house last night but had seen nothing, only heard Jemma crying out for help and her bedroom door being jammed. He’d had plenty of time to think about that when he was tossing and turning in the spare bedroom and by the time he’d headed down for breakfast, had convinced himself that it had all been a play for attention. She was just getting back at her mum for having a man around. Jemma had claimed not to have known that Richard had been there, but she might have noticed his car parked on the front.
But she wasn’t lying, was she? The recording proved that.
Hell, the recording proved nothing. Just a voice. It could just as well have been Jemma playing games with her mum. For it to be anything else would mean that ghosts existed, and he wasn’t sure whether that was a belief he wanted in his world view.
The spotlights he’d installed around the window to display the property listings to their best, flickered.
He checked the plug. It was firmly into the wall, but the transformer was vibrating.
What the hell?
He unplugged it, then plugged it back again. The vibration didn’t reoccur so he let it be.
The lights flickered again, and not just on this window display, but on both sides of the shop.
But they’re on different plugs.
Something going on at the consumer board then. Shit, if this place needed an electrician to come and check it he would be pissed.
The consumer unit was in the back, in a small cupboard under the stairs. The stairs were boarded up on his side, leading to a small flat upstairs that had its own entrance. Richard opened the plastic cover and looked inside, realising that he had no idea whether he was looking at a problem. Each trip switch was in the upright position, the main switch to the board was turned on. There was a faint buzzing sound when he put his head closer but wasn’t that normal? These things didn’t even have fuse wires that could be replaced. If the switches were up and on, then the thing was working.
A crack like a brick dropping came from the shop.
Richard tried to ignore the uncomfortable tightness from his chest, the pain that he’d been to see his doctor about last month. He rushed back and saw precisely nothing. Nobody had entered the shop, nothing looked disturbed, but something was different.
A second crack, this time louder.
And he realised the transformers had blown for the spotlight displays. He picked up one of the transformer units, a small black box a few inches from the plug, and immediately dropped it again. The black casing burnt his hand and the damn thing was still vibrating. A cursory check on the opposite side confirmed that the second unit had blown. He’d had them fitted at the same time so it was conceivable although unlikely that they would both fail within seconds of each other. Would a power surge do something like that? He knew nothing about electrics, but the term power surge gave him some comfort, sounding as it did like a proper technical term that could explain many things.
But you’ve checked the consumer unit and all the switches are fine. The consumer unit would make sure nothing on your circuit could get damaged.
His rational thought could take a hike. If he wanted to believe that a power surge had done this, then that was what he was sticking to. Thankfully, it wasn’t something more extreme. The spotlights had only cost about thirty quid and he could replace these easily enough.
/>
A click came from the front door.
At first, he stared at the door, demanding it to make the noise again. It was a snap, like the click of fingers. He’d heard that noise every time he nipped out to grab some lunch, or when he’d finished for the day.
It was the noise of the snib being clicked off. The door now wouldn’t open from the outside.
Richard rationalised—he was getting good at rationalising the unexplained—that in his haste to come back into the office, he might not have set it correctly. A simple gust of wind from outside, might have vibrated the door enough to knock the snib off.
But that sounds like hokum as well, he thought. And if you believed that to be the case, why is your heart beating that little faster right now?
There was a chill in the room. How quickly the temperature had dropped he couldn’t say, but it was now cold enough that his fingers had noticed and the hair on the back of his neck was bristling. And he had a feeling that he’d had the previous night when he’d been on Judy’s landing, and he’d heard Jemma’s cries coming from her room, and he’d heard that voice in his head, the same voice that he’d heard on the recording that Judy had played him less than half an hour ago. When he’d heard, clearly, the words,
“Go back to sleep.”
And once the fear appeared, it grew and dug its claws in and made his stomach churn.
Richard was terrified. Perhaps more afraid than he’d been since he was a child.
Stepping across the room, he looked all around, wary of any change in the light or the temperature or sounds. He took the snib off and checked that the door opened. He thought of maybe picking up his jacket and heading home for the day, but he had that one viewing he had to do later on, and the owner would drop off a spare set of keys. It wouldn’t be professional to be out.
He closed the door.
“I’m not afraid,” he said, although the faint quiver in his voice betrayed him. There was a tremble in the back of his knees and he firmly planted his feet, extending the leg muscles to put some pressure on the joints and stop the tremble.
The snib turned itself. He spun around and tried to turn the snib back again, but this time it wasn’t having any of it.
The Dark Corners Box Set Page 63