by Beverley Lee
The lights in the house flickered, causing their features to blur and shadow. Finally, Carver spoke. ‘It’s right over the driveway. There’s no way anything can get in. Or out.’
Gabe remained silent as Noah told him and Ollie what he had found in Beth’s room, or rather, what he hadn’t found. Gabe sat twisting the cord on his earphones and occasionally rubbing his right hand. Noah also told them his theory about being baited, and the voice in Carver’s head. This wasn’t the time for secrets. Carver had gone upstairs to check the server room after the lightning bolt. It was no surprise to any of them when he reappeared and shook his head.
‘We stay together, whatever happens.’
‘But what about Beth? We can’t just leave her out there.’ Ollie voiced a question they all were thinking.
‘She might not even be out there, Ollie. At this point, we just don’t know. She could be hiding because of the storm. Do you remember when Ella couldn’t find her last Christmas? To this day we don’t know where she was, but she was fine. If I thought searching outside would yield any success, I’d be ahead of anyone.’ Carver paced the floor behind the sofa with his hands clasped behind his back. Noah knew he was never one to contemplate difficult situations standing still. But he also knew that Carver was placating Ollie and Gabe.
Gabriel didn’t say anything. Noah watched as the boy stared at a knot in the wooden floor, his dark hair obscuring the graze on the side of his cheek.
‘Gabe? Penny for them?’
The boy glanced up and tried to smile. Noah thought it was about the saddest thing he had ever seen.
‘I left my iPad in the White Room. Just let me grab it.’
Carver glanced over and gave Noah a questioning look.
The priest put on what he hoped was an authoritative tone. ‘Thirty seconds, Gabe. Or I’ll be on your case.’
Chapter Forty-Two
The White Room was down the corridor towards the kitchen, past the music room on the right, then turn right in the direction of the cellar, veering off to take the first door on the left. Gabriel had lived in this house for so long, he could have done it blindfolded. Everything was so familiar, yet not. The sounds from the storm were masking things he took for granted—the soft chime of the grandfather clock as it struck a quarter to the hour, Radio Four filtering out from Carver’s suite, other music floating from an upstairs room. But no one played music today.
Whatever was out there had taken Beth. He felt it on a cellular level and he didn’t know how he would cope if anything happened to her. Not just Beth. She’s your mother, Gabriel, a voice whispered against his ear. He turned in the stillness of the hallway, the breath still warm against his lobe, expecting to see—someone.
His iPad lay on the grey sofa where he’d left it. He picked it up, aware of the dark pressing in against the glass of the windows and doors. The curtains hadn’t been drawn and his reflection stared back. His eyes seemed as black as the night, two dark holes in his face, carved into a pale surface. His limbs seemed too long for his body, as though overnight, something had seeped into his bones and was lengthening them like on a rack. Gabriel shivered.
He wondered where Olivia was and how Ella was doing. A burning sensation began to flow through his veins at the injustice of it all. Beth might be out there hidden from view, scared and confused, and he couldn’t do anything about it. His blood thumped around his body in great, rapid heartbeats and he wanted to scream. A sudden thought, dangerous and careless, erupted into his brain, as though it had been borne of his frustration.
Gabe dropped the tablet onto a cushion and walked towards the French doors. His reflection walked towards him too. He idly wondered that if they met in the middle, would one cancel the other out? His hands closed on the metal of the door handles, one firm downward push of his fingers and they would open, allowing the dark to rush in. If something out there wanted him, and he was in no doubt that he was the one at the top of the list, maybe it would leave everyone else alone. It would be worth the sacrifice.
Gabriel raised his eyes and stared into his mirror image—but somehow it wasn’t his own eyes gazing at him, but the eyes of a stranger. The tall man had his hands on the handles on the outside of the door, stopping Gabriel from opening them. The boy jumped back as though an electric shock had shot through the metal. The stranger seemed part of the night, so dark was his clothing. Only his face held any light. He held one slender finger up to his lips.
‘Gabe.’ Ollie stood in the doorway. ‘Come on, you shouldn’t be alone.’
Gabriel spun round, and his eyes went back to the doors.
The stranger had vanished. And Ollie hadn’t seen him.
Chapter Forty-Three
Olivia Taverner had spent the day racing around the narrow country lanes at a speed that should have thrown her into a ditch—or worse, the path of an oncoming vehicle.
She couldn’t remember a time where she had been this angry. Or this hurt. Hot headed was a phrase often used to describe her fly-off-the-handle outbursts. What she was feeling, people saw, so unlike her brother who didn’t like to show any emotion until he had processed it first. She knew he must be worried sick, but approximately four minutes and one mile away from The Manor, she had lowered the window of her car door and pitched her phone onto the side of the road. The noise it made as it hit the solid ground was stupidly satisfying. She was still smarting from the dressing down Carver had given her the night before, and this combined with a restless night’s sleep, and the accusation this morning had been the final straw. Why did he think she had taken anything from the vault? Why not one of the others? She could only assume he really didn’t trust her anymore, and that stung.
Before arriving at The Manor, she had never found anywhere she truly fit in. Life had dealt both her and Ollie a shitty start by taking away their parents and enabling them with unique ‘talents’. So unique that no foster family wanted them around for long, and you could forget about the A word—adoption.
In the past four years, she had never been happier, even with the occasional run-ins with Carver or Noah. Finally, there was a place where she wasn’t special, she was just herself. Carver was the father figure she had never had, although she would never tell him that. And now to think he could blame her for taking something out of the fucking vault hit every exposed nerve in her body.
Plus, there was still that thing with the ghost. Thinking of him as Beth’s late husband and Gabe’s father made him seem far too personal. She didn’t like her spirits so close.
After a day where she had gone through a full tank of fuel and stopped at every coffee shop along the way, she was finally starting to cool down. The passenger footwell of her car was littered with a flotsam of white paper cups and a crumpled-up pack of twenty cigarettes. Not that she even smoked. But she had bought them at a petrol station that morning, along with a disposable lighter, had lit one by the side of the road and coughed her way through it. Two miles further along, she had leant out of the door and thrown up about a litre of coffee. The rest of the pack she crushed in her hands and flung with a scream of frustration into the footwell.
As she brooded, she decided what to do. The darkening sky did nothing to improve her mood and when the first fat drops of rain fell onto her windscreen, she stopped and got out, lifting her face to the sky and letting the droplets stream down her face. She tried to cry and couldn’t.
The thunder rolling around the hills seemed fitting. She stood with her hands clenched tight and her fingernails digging into her palms and let the noise reverberate into her chest.
Dusk fell early with the storm-filled sky and there were no other cars on the road. Everyone would be tucked up at home, watching safely from inside. Coming around the bend before the burnt-out farmhouse, a cat shot across the road in front of her and she braked, her seatbelt locking so quickly it sent a wave of pain from her shoulder to her hip. The cat leapt into the hedgerow, its green eyes glinting with contempt. She lowered her window.
‘Stupid fucking animal!’ The venom in her voice shocked her.
The cat arched its back and hissed, then ducked into the field beyond.
Olivia could smell burning, but it wasn’t the smell of wood. She climbed out of the car and wrinkled her nose—she’d been meaning to get it checked out.
The top roofline of the cottage, or what was left of it, poked miserably over the hedgerow. Far away, a burst of lightning lit the tops of the hills with an eerie, blue glow. Olivia pushed her hair out of her face as the growing wind tried to whip it into knots.
Slowly, and without really knowing why, she walked the short distance to the farmhouse gate. A small flock of birds swooped up from behind the cottage then wheeled as one into a clump of trees in the paddock beyond. She should look for shelter, too, or try to nurse her abused car back to The Manor. She could go down Fairly Hill. Yes, it was steep, but nothing would be coming the other way, and it would cut a good mile off the actual distance home. Home. That simple word hurt her more than anything Carver could have thrown in her direction.
She opened the gate and went through, her feet slipping slightly on the wet shingle path. A single buttercup covered in ash drooped between the edging stones. The wind whipped fragments of burnt wood dust into her face and she covered her mouth and nose with one hand. All of her anger had drained away, leaving only a dull sense of numbed acceptance. The sorry mess of the farmhouse loomed before her. This was insane. It was a ticking time bomb, ready to collapse at any given moment. If she died, would Ollie know immediately?
‘Help me,’ she whispered against her palm, truly not knowing whom it was for.
The door to the farmhouse had been devoured by the flames and beyond lay the blackened remains of what looked like a boiler. Her foot bumped against a solid object and she dug her fingers into a charred pile of ash, closing on something metal. She pulled it out and wiped it across the front of her jeans. The storm crept closer. Lightning lit the sky over the village itself and the rooftops flickered in stark relief. Her eyes dropped to the object in her hand. In the glow, she saw a door knocker. It was in the shape of a lion’s face.
The wind dropped suddenly, as if someone up above had flicked a switch. Olivia turned slowly as the hairs in the nape of her neck began to prickle. By the gate, a form flickered. It had some substance but she could see right through it.
Oh God, what if this was what had been here when Gabe was a baby? Terror turned her blood to ice.
The form hovered and quivered like the shimmer of summer heat over a long, empty road and then harnessed itself to the pathway. It floated from side to side like a balloon on a string that had become snagged. Instinct told her to run, but she couldn’t move. Never again would she laugh when hearing the phrase ‘rooted to the spot’.
The form elongated and she could make out a hazy figure of a man, although she could still see the bars of the gate through him. He was like an undeveloped black-and-white photograph.
Behind her, the darkened ruin of the house blocked her way. Olivia was, by all accounts, trapped.
The form floated towards her, skimming over the path. It was the shape she had seen in the house when Beth was here; it was Gabe’s father.
His face bore an expression of startled disbelief, his eyes wide with shock and his mouth slightly open in an ‘O’ of bewilderment. Shreds of clothing clung to him, occasionally lifting and drifting as though caught in some invisible body of water. He came closer, holding out his hands like a blind man. Olivia caught the scent of petrol and wet dirt. She shrunk back half an inch, still holding the door knocker like a talisman. This was the first time in all of her sightings that a ghost had tried to make contact with her and she was terrified. No amount of research and papers and glimpses could have prepared her for the absolute fear that turned her legs to stone.
The figure that had been Stu Davenport stopped. A dark line formed in the haze of his brow. He was concentrating. Olivia forced his name through half frozen lips and the line deepened. His chin descended, lowering his head. He was nodding.
A gasp of breath left her lungs in a long, drawn-out exhalation.
‘....Bethhhhh...’ A sound belched from deep within him, twisting out of his mouth in a rancid, rolling gasp. She had to fight the gag reflex welling up in her throat.
‘She’s safe,’ Olivia blurted out, not sure how much he would understand. Did ghosts even have understanding? She vowed that if she got out of this intact, she would make it her life’s work to find out. ‘And Gabe. Gabriel. Your son.’
The figure held out one hand and touched the lion’s form in her hand. The fingers were at an odd angle, as though they had been smashed and left to heal like that. The hand dropped and fell right through her own. Olivia snatched her hand back and clutched it to her chest.
An expression she could only say was pure sadness appeared on his face. A wave of empathy stemmed the terror in her throat. This man had met a sudden and traumatic death whilst on the way home to his wife and baby. He sensed they were in trouble and had carried that awful feeling to his grave and beyond. He was nothing to fear.
His form pulsed, fading into the darkness and splitting into disjointed parts.
‘No, don’t go! Please!’ She held out her own hands wanting to grab hold of him and tether him to this earth for a few more minutes. Something was pulling him back, back towards the plane he travelled.
A wail of despair erupted from him and he locked his eyes to hers. As another roll of thunder boomed overhead, he splintered into hundreds of pieces and was gone. But she had heard the words he’d forced from his mouth before his silent scream.
Sheets of rain fell from the sky. By the time she had run to her car, she was soaked to the skin. She raged at herself for dumping her phone that morning. She needed to talk to Carver, to Noah, to be back at The Manor. She ducked into her seat and the wind took the door from her hands and slammed it shut. Water ran down her windscreen like a waterfall. Maybe she could limp home if she was very careful.
Her engine spluttered to life and, flicking her wipers on double speed, she pulled out, heading north where the left hand turn to Fairly Hill branched off from the lane. It was a road only the locals knew about, not much more than a cars width, but it had passing places. She hoped nothing would be coming the other way.
The front of her car wanted to veer off to the left; she had to fight the steering wheel to keep straight. Her fingers ached as she clutched it. Her hair clung to her face like strands of seaweed. Please, please, let me make it back...
Just as she turned at the junction, she saw lights in the distance. It was Tom and Betty’s farmhouse. Should she call in there and phone? She slowed, weighing up her options. They might not even be in. It could be just security lights in the yard, and that would put about another mile on her journey. She couldn’t risk it.
Her headlights split the darkness, the beams arcing as the hill swung left, then right, then left again. She crawled around the bends, struggling with the steering, and aware that a grinding noise from the left suspension was getting louder as metal fought metal.
Nothing mattered but what was in front of her. Her shoulders ached with tension and her jaw was clamped so tight that her teeth physically hurt. The hill dipped then climbed to its highest point. From there, it was a crazy sequence of bends before it hit the road that led to The Manor.
Her beams rose into the darkness as she crested the hill. Far below to her left, the village lay in a cluster of tiny lights like a small slice of the Milky Way had fallen to earth. Sheets of lightning sprayed the night sky and rolls of thunder so loud her ears rang from one peal to the next.
She braked as the car began to descend, aware that the road was so wet, she could see rivers running down the edges. Her tyres scrabbled for grip and she flung it into second gear as she rounded the sharpest curve. Her headlights lit up the hedgerow as the car spun slightly. Olivia fought the slide, jamming on her handbrake in an attempt to stop, but her car had zero traction. The left
hand wheel hit a huge pothole covered in water and the car lurched and bottomed, then something snapped and the steering wheel became light in her hands.
The car gained momentum as its weight carried it downhill. At the next bend, the right hand back wing clipped the edge of the black-and white chevron sign, sending it into a spin. Olivia let go of the wheel and covered her head with her crossed arms. Through a small space on the windscreen, everything flashed past like a speeded-up carousel ride.
Out of nowhere, a piebald bird appeared, its white-tipped wings outstretched in a predator’s glide. Its small black eyes looked right through her. Olivia’s car slid sideways and lost its valiant fight with the road. Her world tipped upside down in a flurry of breaking glass, and everything went black.
Chapter Forty-Four
Beth was such a willing victim.
Aka Maga congratulated itself. She had proved to be more useful alive than dead, and her childlike innocence and capitulation were far too delicious to simply kill. She was ripe and ready for corruption. Beth could prove to be the arrow in its bow.
Discovering that Carver still held the wooden box had vexed Aka Maga to the point of blind fury. It didn’t want an open reminder of the centuries it had spent imprisoned. The box was a fearful place and Aka Maga was not prepared to take the chance of being tricked into dwelling there again. But it could not take it in its present form, and abandoning the bird to take on a more appropriate host was not an option.