“Give us a sign,” she repeated, her voice not much above a stage whisper.
Nothing happened. Kevin picked up the CB, saying, “I wonder how Pete’s getting …”
“No, don’t,” Sceptre interrupted, snatching the handset from him. “The spirits can be shy, you know. Some will turn out only when they’re confident no one will hurt them. If we’re quiet, they may appear.”
“Great,” Kevin grunted. “One spook who doesn’t like whales and another hiding behind the curtains.”
Sceptre ignored him again. “We mean you no harm. Just give us a sign that you’re here. Give us just a tiny sign.”
SLAM! From somewhere beyond the gallery came the boom of a door whamming shut.
Chapter Seven
It was a distant noise, reverberating around the great hall, as if the large double doors leading to the outside world had been hurled shut. The noise startled Sceptre. Alongside her, Kevin paled, and he gave an “eek” of total alarm. She guessed that his heart had skipped a few beats and was now rushing to catch up.
Sceptre sat taut and silent, rigid, on high alert for further sounds. She thought about Pete. He was alone, upstairs somewhere, but he could take care of himself. What she and Kevin needed to do was to pin down the location of any spirit activity. She leapt to her feet. “Come on, we’d better check the computer.” She stood up.
Kevin did not move. “Can we not just stay here?”
“You can,” she told him. “I’m going back to the cafeteria.”
The prospect of being left alone obviously terrified him even more. He struggled to his feet and hurried to catch up with Sceptre as she walked quickly away.
The brilliant pinpoints of their twin flashlights danced across the floor, lighting their path as they moved quickly through the Long Gallery and entrance hall and scurried into the café. Kevin hit the keyboard, bringing the computer out of its screensaver mode. His face a portrait of amazement, he tried to take in all of the messages from the screen.
On the control panel, several alerts flashed. Kevin brought up the main menu and found a host of signals indicating sensors had been tripped all over the house. “Master bedroom, Aggie’s attic room, the Long Gallery, the café. The place is lit up like Trafalgar Square at Christmas.”
They looked at each other.
“The café?” Sceptre’s voice was not much more than a whisper.
Kevin tried to talk up his meagre courage. “It must be us.”
“Yes. It must be,” Sceptre agreed. “Let me just check with the expert. Fishwick. Are you there, Fishwick?”
“Right here, Madam.”
“Fishwick, is there anyone here in the cafeteria with us?”
“Yes, Madam. Sir Henry is in the corner, by the soft drinks display machine. He appears to me as his energy form, but you should see him as he was in life.”
Sceptre trembled with nervous excitement, anticipation and (she had to admit it) some anxiety. But it was the angst associated with widening comfort zones. Like the first kiss, the first physical encounter with a man. Like exam nerves; walking into a room full of desks, knowing that she could easily pass the test, but worried that she might fail.
Get a grip on yourself, girl. She sent the mental order to her mind and body. You’ve spent weeks, months telling your two friends that there is nothing to fear, so confront this spirit.
“Remember the old man at Rossington Terrace last night, Madam.”
Fishwick’s encouragement leaping into her head startled her. “I thought you couldn’t read minds, Fishwick.”
Alongside her, Kevin remained intent upon his computer, too terrified to look round, but he obviously thought she was talking to him, and asked, “What?”
“I’m talking to Fishwick,” she reported. “Well, Fishwick?”
“I cannot read your mind, Madam, but I guessed from the length of time in which you hadn’t moved that you were becoming nervous. You saw the old man at Rossington Terrace. Sir Henry is no different.”
Sceptre said nothing. Sir Henry was different. The old man haunting the Bilks’ place didn’t even know he was dead. And the best he could do was turn himself into a wolfman. Sir Henry had been hanging around this house for over 300 years and was considerably more dangerous. If Kevin were to be believed (Sceptre had no reason to doubt her partner) the former squire had already demonstrated his ability to manipulate the physical environment by throwing a CD around. To turn and face this disquieted spirit was not simply a step outside her comfort zones or a walk into an examination room, and it was not a first kiss. It was a confrontation with a very real, possibly dangerous ghost.
Still putting off the moment, she checked on Kevin. She would get no help there. He was frozen into immobility and had even stopped playing with the computer. Pete was away upstairs somewhere. She was the only person who could face Sir Henry.
Sceptre took a deep breath and turned sharply to her left.
The room was as dark as the rest of the house, lit only by a few thin, overhead lamps. The drinks dispenser was several metres away, dark and dormant without the power to make it work, just a bulky shape without depth or definition. Sir Henry stood alongside it, a grim figure, dressed, so it appeared, in knee breeches and a high-collared coat. Sceptre could not be certain, but she had the odd feeling that he desired her the way he had wanted Aggie Devis. But that was nonsense, and she knew it the instant she thought it. A product of her knowledge of Sir Henry Melmerby and his rapacious appetites. Once more she recalled the old man of Rossington Terrace. She had not flinched before him, and she would not back away from Sir Henry Melmerby.
She took a step towards him.
He promptly disappeared.
Startled and irritated, she spun the tripod-mounted camcorder round, trained it on the general serving area and switched it into record mode.
“Well?” Kevin’s voice brought her back to reality. When she turned, he was still staring at the computer screen, too frightened to look anywhere else.
“Well, what?”
“It’s us, isn’t it?” Kevin wanted to know. “We triggered the alarms in here, didn’t we?”
She absorbed his look of fear, felt his need for reassurance, and acquiesced. “Yes, Kevin, it’s us. We set off the alerts.”
He let go a sigh of relief. “Thank God for that. For a minute there, I thought the old whale hater was back.”
Sceptre did not reply. Her eyes were fixed on the glowing monitor and its eight video camera images.
“Look,” she croaked. “The master bedroom. There’s something in there.”
His finger shaking, Kevin tapped the mouse pad, directed the cursor and brought the mini-screen up to fill the monitor. The camera lens was fogged again. Someone or something had opened the door and created a temperature differential, but on the bed was something unmistakable: a huge, human form.
Sceptre scrabbled for the CB. “Pete. Pete! Where the hell are you?”
On screen, the large form began to move.
“He’s wearing fashionable gear, isn’t he?” Much of Kevin’s fear had gone with the belief that the phantom, which he had convinced himself was here in the cafeteria, was now on the upper floors, and between it and him was the formidable obstacle of ex-Detective Constable Brennan. “I mean, look at those trainers. They’re Reeboks, aren’t they?” He looked at Sceptre. “Can they do that, ghosts? Pick up modern clothing and stuff?”
She did not answer. In exasperation, she clicked and clicked the transmit button of her handset. “For God’s sake, Pete, will you pick up your radio? We need you.”
The figure groped around the bed. “Randy old git, isn’t he? Been dead all them years and he’s still after the chicks.”
Now the form had picked something up.
“Wonder what that is,” muttered Kevin.
“We’ll have to go up there,” said Sceptre.
Kevin suddenly realised he had been talking to himself, holding a parallel, but not linked conversation with Scep
tre. Upon her final suggestion, he suddenly hopped from his track to hers.
“For all we know, Pete could have been overcome,” she said.
“Yes,” said Kevin, “and there are fairies in my window box. Any ghost taking on Pete Brennan wants its paranormal head seeing to, and if you think I’m going anywhere near that…” He threw out an arm at the screen. “… you’ve got another think coming.”
“We can’t just leave Pete up there alone,” Sceptre protested.
Kevin did not hear. He watched the apparition bring the object it had picked up to its mouth.
“Looks like a bar of chocolate,” said Kevin, and pangs of hunger attacked him.
“What do you want?” Pete’s voice burst from the radio.
Sceptre’s relief showed in her voice. “Thank God. Pete, we were worried about you. The whole house has gone mad and there’s something moving in the master bedroom.”
There was a brief pause. On screen, the phantom figure looked around its immediate environment.
“Well, I’m in there, and I can’t see anything,” Pete replied.
Kevin’s alarm reached new heights. “It’s on the bed. We’re watching it.”
Pete was seen to look around. “That’s me, you idiots! I was having a bit of kip.”
“Oh.”
“Oh.”
In the ensuing silence, Kevin and Sceptre exchanged a sheepish glance. Kevin chuckled. “I thought those trainers looked new.”
Sceptre focused more on the business at hand. “We have a sensor registering in the attics, Pete, and a temperature drop on the third floor corridor.”
“I’ll check it out and get back to you.”
The dim shape moved. Pete polished the camera lens once more, until they could see him clearly, and then he left the room, appearing almost instantly in a nearby mini-screen as he emerged onto the landing.
Still hungry, Kevin turned his back on Sceptre, digging into his bag for a bar of chocolate. She moved the mouse and transferred the corridor mini-screen to the centre of the display, and almost immediately, the camera lens fogged. On her instruction, Pete wiped it and made his way to the attic entrance. As he reached it, a faint glow of light moved rapidly along the floor behind him; almost instantly, the lens fogged again.
Sceptre was breathless with excitement. “Did you see that?”
“No,” Kevin admitted. “I wasn’t watching.”
“An orb,” she enthused. “No one knows what they are, but one theory is they’re the precursor to a manifestation. It’s like a tiny ball of light wandering along the corridor.”
“That’s all we need,” grumbled Kevin. “We’re in the dark with just a couple spooks for company, and now we’ve got a ghost tenpin bowling along the top floors.”
Sceptre ignored his cynicism and flicked the screen to the attic, and the nursery, where the rocking horse was silhouetted under the single skylight.
Kevin watched over her shoulder as Pete’s huge frame entered the room and the lens misted up. He wiped it clean, flashed his torch at all corners and reported, “Nothing here, Sceptre. I’ll come back down.”
Kevin turned away to eat his chocolate. He heard the door close over the audio connection. It was followed by a gasp from Sceptre.
“Look!” She cried.
Kevin groaned. “Do I have to? Can’t I just shut my eyes for the rest of the night?”
“The rocking horse,” Sceptre breathed. “It’s rocking.”
Kevin glanced over her shoulder. “Rocking horses tend to rock. It’s what they’re designed for. That’s why they’re called rocking horses”
“Yes, but there’s no one there to start it up.”
Kevin looked over her shoulder again. “Maybe it was Pete.”
“It started after he left,” she assured him.
Kevin grunted and turned away.
Much calmer now in the knowledge that the rocking horse was two floors away and that the beast in the master bedroom and the alarm in the cafeteria had been explained, Kevin wandered behind the counter and switched on the kettle. “You want a cuppa?”
“Please.”
“I’ll make one for Pete as well. It’s freezing up there, and he was kipping on top of the bed instead of under the blankets.” He reached to an overhead shelf and took down three cups. “And, you know, if it hasn’t been slept in for all those years, it’ll be damp too, so maybe... where’s the sugar?”
With an almost silent swish along the metal surface, the sugar appeared at his right hand.
“Cheers, luv,” he prattled on. “My old mum always says there’s nothing like a cuppa when you’re in trouble. You got any milk there?”
There was another swishing sound as the milk slid along the surface.
“Thanks, Sceptre. You know, this ghost hunting lark isn’t...”
“Pete, can you hear me, Pete?” Sceptre’s voice coming from the computer, ten metres away, cut Kevin off.
“What is it?” came the testy voice of Pete over the radio.
“We’ve had alerts from the Long Gallery,” Sceptre told Pete. “Could you take a look as you come back down?”
“Wilco,” Pete’s voice came back. “Meantime, check on Kevin’s underpants. There are more ghosts there than here.”
Kevin felt his face drain of blood again. His eyes were riveted on the sugar and milk. They had both slid along the polished metal counter from his right. He’d thought that Sceptre had passed them, but she was at the computer, 10 metres away to his left, and the radio conversation confirmed that Pete was still upstairs.
Slowly, Kevin turned to his right, but his head never got to ninety degrees. At about a third of the way through, a teaspoon fell from somewhere up above him, clattering onto the surface near the cups. He almost fainted.
He gripped the edge of the range to prevent himself falling. He felt an urgent need of the lavatory, but he was too terrified to move. Anyway, making for the staff toilets at the rear of the kitchen would have meant being alone, out of sight of his friends, and right there and then, he did not want to be alone and he did not imagine that Sceptre would hold his hand while he visited the dunny.
“S-S-Sceptre,” he stammered, “tell me you’ve just chucked a spoon at me.”
“Hmm?” Sceptre studied the computer images.
“Teaspoon,” Kevin repeated. “You’ve just thrown one, right?”
“No sugar for me.”
He now turned his head frantically left and right and was relieved to see nothing and no one there. He whipped round, mouth gaping and saw her concentrating on the computer screen. “Sceptre, someone’s just passed me the milk, sugar and a spoon.”
“Just a little milk please,” she said, her concentration honed on the computer.
Kevin raised his voice to a shout. “Sceptre, you’re not listening.”
At last she looked up, frowning irritably. “Kevin, I’m trying to concentrate here. What do you want?”
“The milk and sugar and a spoon,” he told her. “Someone’s just given them to me and if it wasn’t you, who was it?”
“Oh, Kevin, you really have got the shakes tonight, haven’t you?” It was the kind of tone usually reserved for naughty schoolboys.
Kevin’s resentment swelled and he raised his voice even further, giving vent to it. “I have not got the jitters. Well, I have, but I’m not imagining it. I asked for sugar and it arrived, I asked for milk and it arrived, I didn’t ask for the spoon, but that arrived anyway. All on its own.”
“Well, whoever gave you the milk and sugar,” Sceptre said tartly, “would know that you needed the spoon.” Her sarcasm getting her nowhere, she turned to her butler for support. “Fishwick?”
“Madam?”
“Have you been passing milk, sugar and spoons to Mr. Keeley?” She was just as irritated with Fishwick as she had been with Kevin.
“No, Madam,” said her butler with implacable calm, “but it’s possible another entity may have done. I’ve been up in the attics where
the child has been playing with a rocking horse. However, there are no spirits here at this immediate moment.”
“Thank you, Fishwick.” She faced Kevin again. “You imagined it.”
“Now listen …”
Sceptre never got around to listening to Kevin. The computer beeped again and a temperature sensor recorded a drop of five degrees on the first floor. She snatched up her handset. “Pete, is it cold up there?”
Pete’s voice echoed through the ether. “Put it this way, I’ve just seen a penguin thumbing a lift to warmer climes.”
Sceptre checked the readings from various locations throughout the house. “It’s five degrees colder where you are than it is anywhere else in the house. That could indicate paranormal activity.”
“It could also indicate,” Pete argued across the ether, “that someone left a few windows open.”
“And have they?” she demanded.
“I don’t know,” he replied, “because I didn’t take any notice.”
Sceptre fumed. “Pete, if we are to be professional, we can’t skimp. We need to check and eliminate every possibility. Why not check again and ensure that all the windows in all the rooms are shut?”
Pete’s reply carried exactly the right amount of sarcasm to let her know what he thought of her demands. “Yes, boss.”
Satisfied, Sceptre turned to Kevin again. “Now Kevin, what can we do to allay your fears?”
“You can start by taking me seriously for a start,” he snapped. “I might look like a fat joke with a windy backside, but I’m not a total loon. That sugar bowl, the milk jug and spoon arrived by themselves.”
Chewing her lip, her features set into an expression of analytical thought, Sceptre crossed the cafeteria and moved behind the counter to join him. Sugar bowl and milk jug and spoon were all manufactured from stainless steel, as was the metal top of the counter.
“Before we assume it was one of the ghosts in this place, let’s eliminate all other possibilities,” she suggested.
‘You just said Fishwick told you I was imagining it.”
“I was being economical with the truth.” Kevin scowled and Sceptre explained, “I was trying to calm you down. Now come on. Let’s check other possible explanations. Magnetism?”
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