The Haunted Book

by Jack Heath

  ‘Why not just break a window?’ Dale asked. He had heard this story before, but that had never occurred to him.

  ‘Lots of reasons,’ Dad said. ‘Broken glass is a hazard, for one. A burglar can’t afford to leave any blood behind, because the forensic teams can get DNA from it. Not that this was a burglar, exactly—but I’ll get to that. Breaking a window is pretty noisy, too.’

  ‘If he was banging on things inside the house, he can’t have been too worried about the noise.’

  ‘Well, this wasn’t a rational criminal. He was … something else. Anyway, I went in through the front door. The house was really cold—all the heat had escaped through the hole in the roof. The wind made a moaning, wailing sound. But I could also hear the banging sound the couple had reported. It sounded like someone hammering nails into a cheap coffin.’

  Mum rolled her eyes, but Sarah was entranced.

  ‘I checked all the bedrooms, both the bathrooms—everywhere. No sign of anyone. But the noise was only getting louder. I risked turning on my torch. And then I saw it …’

  Dad paused. Dale realised he was holding his breath. Watching Sarah hear the story for the first time made it feel new again to him.

  ‘What did you see?’ Sarah demanded.

  ‘Footprints. Wet, muddy and really big. I figured I must be dealing with a giant. Or a ghost—because the footprints led me over to the wall, and then stopped. It was as if the intruder had walked straight through the wall. And I could still hear the banging. It sounded like it was coming from the other side. I pressed my ear against the wall—and it shifted. Just a little bit.’

  ‘A secret passage!’ Sarah gasped.

  Dad winked. ‘Precisely. I pushed harder and part of the wall swung open, on hinges so well hidden that the owners had never known they were there. Behind it I found a narrow, winding staircase, which led down and down into the earth beneath the house. I kept my torch off, because I didn’t want the intruder to know I was there. Not before I could be sure what I was dealing with. And when I got to the bottom, I saw him.’

  ‘Who was it?’

  ‘I’ve never seen anything like it. He was huge—easily two metres tall. He was shoulder-barging this huge wooden door, over and over. All around his feet there were planks that he’d removed with a claw hammer—the door down there had been boarded up before he got to it. I got out my handcuffs and said, “Stop! Police.”’

  Dad held up his hand, as though dangling a pair of cuffs.

  ‘Very, very slowly,’ he said, ‘the guy turned around. You should have seen the look in his eyes. He was scared. But not of me, I quickly figured out.

  ‘He said, “Officer. Arrest me if you want to. But first, I must get into that room.”’

  Dad put on a deep, determined voice. He made the intruder sound more posh than Dale had expected.

  ‘“This isn’t your house,” I said. “You’ll have to come with me.”

  ‘“Lives are at stake,” he told me. “What’s in there will keep killing, over and over and over, unless it is stopped.”

  ‘I couldn’t help it. I was curious. “What’s in there?” I asked.

  ‘He looked at me, and he said, “A ghost.”‘

  Dad took a sip of his soda water. ‘That’s when I put the cuffs on him.’

  ‘No way,’ Sarah said. ‘Is all that true?’

  ‘Every word,’ Dad said. ‘I can show you the secret passage.’

  ‘You said it was sealed off by the old owners,’ Dale said.

  ‘Well, I can show you where it used to be,’ Dad said. ‘You’ve finished dinner, right?’

  Dale gulped down the last of his toast and followed Dad as he led Sarah into the living room.

  ‘Here we are,’ Dad said. ‘Can you see it?’

  Dale looked around. The living room looked the same as it always had. There were no doors, secret or otherwise. Just an arch leading away to the long hallway. Had Dad made the whole thing up?

  ‘I see it!’ Sarah exclaimed suddenly. She walked over to the wall, arms outstretched, as if in a trance. Her palms slid over the plaster.

  And then Dale saw it too. The faintest of seams, cutting a narrow rectangle into the wall.

  ‘Well done,’ Dad said. ‘You can see why the owners never knew it was there.’

  Sarah pushed against the secret door, but it didn’t budge.

  ‘Sorry, Sarah,’ Dad said. ‘Soon after I arrested the intruder, the owners had the passage plastered over. You can’t get down there now—not without a chainsaw.’

  ‘What was behind the door?’ Dale asked. ‘Where the intruder was trying to get into?’

  ‘I never found out,’ Dad said. ‘The owners didn’t want to know, so they never called a locksmith to get inside. In fact, they didn’t even want to live here after the break-in. So they’ve been renting the place out ever since …’

  ‘To us,’ Mum finished. ‘Well, one week out of every year, anyway. So,’—she clapped her hands together—’who wants dessert?’

  ‘I do!’ Sarah yelled, and she ran back into the dining room.

  Dale stayed for a minute longer, staring at the door. He wanted to believe that his dad was making the whole thing up. The seams were so fine that they could just be natural cracks in the plaster.

  But he couldn’t convince himself that the story wasn’t true. He could feel something—a presence. Something on the other side of the wall. Something evil.

  This thought was so insane, so unlike him, that he found himself stumbling backwards away from the wall.

  ‘Dale?’ Dad said. ‘You OK?’

  Dale caught his balance. He glanced at the secret door—and, just like that, the feeling was gone. He was looking at an ordinary wall. Nothing strange or supernatural about it.

  ‘I’m fine,’ he said. ‘I just tripped. So what’s for dessert?’

  THE BOOK

  Dessert was fruit salad with a scoop of ice-cream and a smattering of chocolate sauce. Dale ate his with a teaspoon so it lasted longer. Afterwards, he cleared the plates and started to do the dishes.

  It wasn’t just a desire to be helpful. He was putting off going to bed.

  When the dishes were done, Dale boiled the kettle on the stovetop and made cups of tea for everyone. He cradled his tea until it was almost too cold to drink, before he gulped it down. Then he washed the teapot and all the cups. He went to the bathroom and brushed his teeth, dread building and building in his stomach.

  Soon he found himself standing outside the door to his bedroom, daring himself to go in, telling himself over and over again that there was no such thing as ghosts and that he had just imagined something moving under the door.

  This is ridiculous, he thought. I’m smarter than this.

  ‘He believes you, you know.’

  Dale turned around. Sarah was standing behind him in her fluffy pyjamas, a toothbrush sticking out the side of her mouth and her novel under her arm.

  ‘Who believes who about what?’ he asked.

  ‘The man in the forest,’ Sarah said. ‘Uncle Claude knows you saw him.’

  ‘Did he say that?’

  ‘No. But if he thought you were making it up, he would have cancelled the search. Wouldn’t he?’

  ‘Maybe he was too proud,’ Dale said, ‘to admit to the dispatch office that the lead was probably nothing.’

  ‘Or maybe he’s too proud to apologise for doubting you,’ Sarah said.

  ‘Maybe,’ Dale said, though it seemed unlikely. ‘Anyway. I’m going to bed.’

  Sarah smiled. ‘In the haunted room.’

  ‘There’s no such thing,’ Dale insisted.

  ‘Uh-huh. Well, sweet dreams.’

  Grumbling, Dale stepped into the bedroom and closed the door in Sarah’s face.

  He dug through his suitcase until he found his pyjamas, changed, and climbed into bed. The springs squeaked. The sheets smelled faintly of mould.

  He picked up his e-reader, remembered that it was broken, and put it on the bedside
table …

  Next to a book.

  A reddish-brown hardcover with no dust jacket.

  Dale jolted back as though he had seen a spider. He had left that book on the table in the living room. What was it doing in his bedroom?

  Someone must have moved it. That was the only explanation. But who? And why?

  As he stared at the book, he couldn’t help feel that it was staring back at him.

  Don’t be ridiculous, he told himself. It’s just a book. Pick it up. Read it. What the heck is wrong with you?

  He reached towards it. His hand hovered over the cover.

  Dale had a rule. He would only read a book if the first line made him curious. It had to raise questions and withhold the answers. It had to make him want to finish it.

  I’ll just take a peek, he thought. See what sort of book it is.

  He opened up the book. To his surprise, it was handwritten, not printed. The words were in a sloped, meticulous scrawl. Was this a diary?

  The first line was this:

  Do not stop reading; my life depends on it.

  A chill slithered up Dale’s spine and into his hair. OK, book, he thought. You have my attention.

  Part One: Dissecting Slugs

  Do not stop reading; my life depends on it. The events described on the following pages may sound incredible, but I swear to you on my mother’s grave that every word is true. Any chemist or neuroscientist will vouch for my credentials. My experiments are repeatable.

  Alternatively, you may find my actions believable but repulsive. I have only this to say in my defence: all great science crosses boundaries.

  My name is Luke Francis Greenway. I was born on the third of May, 1851. My parents were Frederick and Shirley Green way. I live at 78 Vale View Road.

  Remember these details; they will be important later.

  My mother, a prominent figure in the field of phrenology, drowned in Sorrow Lake when I was nine years old. I watched from the shore as she dove into the icy water, never to resurface. I remember thinking: Golly, mother certainly can hold her breath for a long time. It didn’t occur to me to be frightened until my father had already kicked off his shoes and was wading in, screaming her name.

  Her body was never found. Only six years later, my father was buried beneath a headstone with both their names chiselled into its face, painted with gold leaf. The official cause of death was tuberculosis, but, in truth, he had never recovered from the trauma of losing his wife. It was as if her death were an open wound, draining him of blood, drop by drop, until his heart had not enough left to pump.

  The early deaths of my parents were traumatic, but the worst was yet to come.

  During my first week at university, my biology professor, a wily old coot named Derek Higgins, recognised my surname. I was in his class, peeling slimy layers off a slug with a scalpel—and noting that beneath the skin, the mantle cavity had twisted around so it was above the creature’s head—when the professor asked if I was related to Sheryl Green way, the brilliant scientist.

  I told him, perhaps too coldly, that my mother had indeed been Shirley Green way.

  ‘Of course,’ he said, without apology. ‘It was a tragedy for the field to lose such a talented psychologist.’

  ‘Phrenologist,’ I said, growing angry.

  ‘Quite so,’ he said, and pointed at the slug. ‘Take note of the vestigial shell, just there. ‘ Then he moved on to examine the work of other students. The conversation was over.

  I stormed off, a cauldron of rage bubbling beneath my ribs. My mother’s groundbreaking research had been a gift to science. She had been dead not ten years. And yet this supposedly learned man had forgotten not only her Christian name, but her field!

  I climbed into my carriage and instructed the driver to take me home. As he cracked the whip over the mare’s flank and her hooves clopped on the cobblestones, something else occurred to me: I would suffer the same fate as my mother.

  Not drowning, but death, followed by obscurity.

  Regardless of how much I achieved during my lifetime, I would someday be a half-remembered name from a half-forgotten textbook.

  Unless.

  Upon arriving home I took a brisk walk, and when the light faded, I drank a strong cup of tea. As I settled into bed in my large, empty house, I made an oath. Something that sounded impossible at first, but the more I pondered, the more I became convinced that I could achieve it.

  I promised myself that I would not die and be forgotten as my parents had. I would live forever.

  You may scoff, dear reader. But in the following chapters, you will find the secret to my immortality.

  L.F. Greenway

  MYSTERY

  Dale closed the book, unnerved. He was pretty sure that 78 Vale View Road—the address in the book—was the house he was currently in. Could he really have found the diary of the original owner?

  Surely not. It had all that stuff about immortality in it. Clearly it was a work of science fiction.

  But it was definitely old. Dale sniffed the binding. It smelled like dust, old wood pulp and something else—that mouldy scent he had thought was coming from the bedsheets.

  And it looked genuinely handwritten. He ran his fingers across the page, feeling the dents the pen—or quill, even—had made.

  Three possibilities.

  One: this was a sci-fi manuscript, left in the house by a previous owner or tenant.

  Two: this was one of Sarah’s elaborate pranks. She’d found a really, really old journal, blank, filled it in with nonsense, and left it in his room to scare him.

  Three: this really was the diary of a madman.

  Dale rubbed his tired eyes, put the book back on his bedside table and slumped against the pillows. There must be some way to prove the diary was fake. Greenway seemed to be saying that he had lived in this house while he was a student. Was there a university within horseriding distance? Mum or Dad might know.

  He wished Josh were there. Josh would say something funny, in his quiet, weird way, and make everything seem all right.

  Dale reached over the side of his bed and pulled his phone off the charger. The screen lit up. It took him twenty seconds to compose a text and send it:

  Hey mate. Hope you’re enjoying your trip. The mountain house is the same as ever—somehow spooky and boring at the same time. Are you awake?

  The message bounced back.

  There was no reception.

  ‘Fine,’ Dale muttered. He turned out the light and pressed his face into the pillow.

  There was a prickling on the back of his neck. Dale couldn’t hear or see anything, but he couldn’t help feeling like he wasn’t alone in the room.

  ‘Don’t be stupid,’ he told himself, and squeezed his eyes shut.

  DOWN, DOWN, DOWN

  Dale was running.

  Through the darkness of the house, desperately shoving aside chairs and ducking around doorways. His heartbeat was deafening in his ears. He had to find the secret door, and quickly.

  Because something was looking for him.

  He didn’t know what it was, but he knew it was something bad, and that it was getting closer. He could hear its deep, rattling breaths in the other room. Every few seconds a heavy, scratching footstep would echo through the house. It would do horrible things to him if it found him.

  The door. Where was it? The walls were zebra-striped with moving shadows. He ran his sweaty hands over the plaster, fumbling for the seam. He was trying to be quiet, but it didn’t matter. The thing didn’t need to hear him. It was sniffing. It could smell him in the dark.

  There! The wall moved, just a little bit. He heaved upon it, forcing the hinges, tumbling through into the pitch black, somehow even darker than the rest of the house.

  No time to close the secret door behind him. He could feel the thing gaining ground. It knew exactly where he was. So down he went, stumbling over the narrow steps, his panicked breaths bouncing off the damp stone walls and echoing around the passageway
. He ran and ran, getting dizzy from the corkscrew shape of the staircase.

  And then there he was, at the door. The one the intruder had tried to break down. The one that hid endless mysteries—no-one knew what lay on the other side.

  But whatever it was, it couldn’t be more dangerous than staying where he was.

  He pounded his fists against the wood, barely feeling the splinters digging into his skin. The door wouldn’t budge.

  And then he realised something.

  Something terrible.

  Somehow, he was now on the other side of the door. He was actually trapped in the mystery room.

  And the thing was still behind him …

  ‘Yeeaargh!’

  Dale sat bolt upright so fast that the sweat flew off his brow and splashed the sheets.

  Just a nightmare, he told himself.

  Nothing’s after me.

  Everything is fine.

  He wiped his forehead with his hands, and found them grubby. Mould must not be the only thing in this bed—he was covered in something resembling sawdust.

  Dale was familiar with recurring nightmares. He knew kids who dreamed about forgetting to prepare before they had to give a speech to the class. Some found themselves in a public place and realised they were only wearing underpants. Josh had a recurring nightmare about accidentally walking into the girls’ toilets.

  Not Dale. His scary dreams were always about being chased. Something—sometimes zombies, sometimes Godzilla, lately a horde of spiders—would be after him. And no matter how fast he ran or how well he hid, it would keep getting closer and closer.

  But this dream had been more disturbing than the others. His heart was still racing. Even though this time he had no idea what had been chasing him—his recall of the nightmare was fading fast—it had felt so real.

  He clambered off the mattress. His arms ached and his brain hurt. He was more tired than when he had gone to bed.

  It’s the book’s fault, he thought. It put weird thoughts into my head.