The Girl in the Letter

by Emily Gunnis

  ‘So, how was the rest of your day?’ Sam sipped her Diet Coke.

  ‘Same old shit. What about you?’

  ‘Yeah, same here,’ said Sam, thinking the opposite. That was why she did this job: she loved it. She’d done jobs where she’d watched the clock all day, feeling as if her soul was being sucked out through her fingernails. She’d never go back there again.

  ‘What do you do, then?’ asked Andy, raising his voice to be heard over the blaring house music.

  ‘Not a lot at the moment. I’ve got a young daughter, and we’re living at my nana’s at the moment, just keeping her company.’

  ‘Oh yeah, your grandad died, didn’t he.’

  ‘He did.’ An awkward silence fell between them. Andy took a huge gulp of his lager. Sam always took the piss out of Ben for taking an hour to drink a pint. She suddenly felt like crying. What was she doing here? She needed to go home, now.

  ‘So did you find that nun you were looking for?’

  Sam put down her drink. ‘Yes, I did. Thank you for your help.’

  ‘No worries. I’ll be glad when they tear that place down and I can finally get out of there. I’m sick of everyone breathing down my neck.’

  His mobile started to ring and he picked it up, looked at the number then cut off the call.

  ‘Fuck it,’ he said.

  ‘What?’ said Sam.

  ‘There’ll be a bollocking waiting for me on the answerphone when I get back.’ He took out a Zippo lighter and began flicking it open and closed. ‘You wanna rollie?’

  ‘I’m okay, thanks. So when was St Margaret’s meant to be demolished?’

  ‘Four months ago. The hold-up has cost them nearly a million quid.’ He pulled a packet of tobacco from his pocket.

  ‘Jesus! What, because of the inquest?’

  ‘Yeah, it took a while because that priest was down in the sewers when he died.’ Andy began pinching tobacco from the packet and pressing it into a paper.

  ‘What was he doing down there?’ said Sam, noticing that Fred was still watching her from the other side of the room.

  Andy paused, then shrugged. ‘It’s a rabbit warren, that house, gives me the creeps, and a magnet for waifs and strays. You just can’t keep them all away. There’s a tramp been living in the outhouse for months. I keep kicking him out, but he comes back.’ He drained his glass.

  ‘Another pint? I think I owe you two, if I remember rightly,’ said Sam.

  ‘Go on then. Only got that shitty Portakabin to go back to.’ He eyed her in a way that made her feel uncomfortable.

  She returned from the bar with a pint and a whisky chaser. She was beginning to think her drink with Andy might be getting her somewhere. ‘There you go.’

  ‘Cheers.’ He knocked back the whisky, not dropping his stare.

  ‘So you’ve felt the ghosts walking round that place too?’ said Sam.

  Andy laughed emptily. ‘Put it this way, it’s a relief to get out into the graveyard when you’ve been in that house.’

  ‘So why do you think he was down in the sewers?’ said Sam, pulling her long red hair back and wrapping it into a knot.

  ‘It doesn’t make any odds come Tuesday,’ said Andy, picking up his pint. ‘Sooner that place is buried under concrete, the better.’ He eyed her glass. ‘Aren’t you gonna have a proper drink?’

  ‘Sure,’ said Sam, glancing at his keys on the table. ‘I’ll have a white wine, please.’

  He picked up his wallet and headed off to the bar. As soon as his back was turned, she grabbed the keys and started fumbling through them under the table. There were only three: one was a car key, another looked like it was for a padlock, so the third had to be for the Portakabin. Quickly she peeled it off. She’d leave it on the floor of the cabin once she was done; with any luck he’d think it had just fallen off. She looked up to see him on his way back from the bar, and slid the keys under her bag.

  ‘There you go,’ he said, slopping half the contents of her wine onto the table. ‘Oops, sorry.’

  ‘No worries.’ Sam took a glug of the battery acid. She would need it for Dutch courage. Hopefully the dog would be tied up, otherwise she was screwed.

  ‘So don’t your boyfriend mind you going out with strangers?’ Andy put his hand over hers.

  It took Sam all her willpower not to tug it away. ‘What he doesn’t know won’t hurt him.’

  ‘You gonna give me a kiss then?’ He drained his pint and turned to her.

  ‘Sure. I just need to go and do something first. Can I meet you in half an hour?’ She forced a smile.

  ‘What? Why?’ snapped Andy.

  ‘I need to pop home and get some stuff for tomorrow. I don’t know where tonight is going to take us, but if I’ve got my stuff, I can go straight to work in the morning.’ She clutched the key in her fist as she stood up.

  ‘Oh, right, sure!’ His mood instantly lifted again. ‘Meet you by the pier?’

  ‘Perfect,’ said Sam.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Monday 6 February 2017

  Kitty tripped and stumbled as her numb feet struggled to respond to her demands. When she finally reached the red-brick outhouse, she barely had the strength to pull back the splintered stable door, which was swinging from its hinges. After three attempts, she finally opened it wide enough to squeeze through and fell inside, collapsing on a pile of leaves by the entrance.

  She sat motionless, her eyes scanning the space around her as the moonlight came through the holes in the brickwork. The walls had split and crumbled and most of the roof had collapsed, leaving wood splintered over the stone floor.

  It was exactly as she remembered, with the old plough turned on its side in the corner.

  Another door at the back of the building stood slightly ajar, revealing a room with green paint peeling from the walls. Kitty stood up and shuffled across towards it. As she put out her hand to push it open, a large brown rat ran out from under the rubble and into the room ahead of her. She watched as it scuttled around the edge of the toilet, then disappeared under the bed. The room was filthy, with black mould climbing the walls and the stench of sewage filling the air.

  There were cans of food on the floor and an open packet of biscuits. Someone had been here. Someone was living in this room and had been here very recently. She approached the bed, running her fingers over the blanket before picking it up and inhaling its smell. Then she walked over to the basin and turned one of the taps, letting out a gasp as water came spluttering out.

  ‘Hello?’ she whispered. ‘Is anybody here?’

  She had been right. Her sister had been here at St Margaret’s all along, and this was where she was going to find her. It was too much to take in. The room was starting to spin, and she leant over the basin, put her hands under the water and splashed it on her face.

  When she stood up, there in the mirror behind her was Elvira, old now, like Kitty, her grey hair scraped back from her thin, pale face.

  ‘Have you forgotten what I told you?’ she asked, her eyes black.

  She walked over to the wall and pulled a loose brick away. Behind it was a heavy iron key. She held it out to Kitty.

  ‘Burn the house and set them free.’

  As Kitty reached out to her sister, a crash came from the other side of the room, and she looked round to see a man with a long beard and torn clothes standing with a pile of kindling at his feet.

  ‘Who the hell are you? Get out!’ he shouted.

  Kitty looked around for Elvira, but she was gone. ‘Come back!’ she called. Tears stung her eyes. ‘My sister, where has my sister gone?’

  ‘Get out! This is my place. Get out!’ As the vagrant came charging towards her, Kitty let out a scream and ran.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Monday 6 February 2017

  After searching the entire perimeter of the house and finally finding a hole in the fence by the graveyard, Sam stumbled over the freezing pitch-black grounds feeling as if every ghost in St Margaret’
s was watching her. As she approached the Portakabin, Sam was relieved to find Andy and his dog were nowhere to be seen and despite the fact that it was stifling, with the windows firmly shut and a pungent smell of damp in the air, she was nonetheless glad to be safely inside. Sam fumbled in the dark for the light switch, her chest tightening as the lack of oxygen ignited her nerves. Finally she located the plastic switch and pressed it down, flooding the pitiful room with light.

  The sight that met her was unpleasant but not a surprise. At one end, a single bed lay unmade, with a sea of porn magazines and empty beer cans scattered over the floor. A filthy sink sat in the corner, a tube of toothpaste oozing its contents, and various bottles of aftershave and deodorant on a dirty shelf above it. At the other end of the cabin was a small grey leather sofa and a TV. An array of pizza and takeaway boxes covered a small coffee table at its centre.

  Dirty net curtains hung at the window. Sam pulled them aside to check for any sign of car headlights, then turned on the lamp by the sofa and clicked off the glaring overhead lights before scanning the room.

  Eventually her eyes fell on what she was looking for: a filing cabinet. The top drawer appeared to be crammed mostly with marketing material, brochures for the soon-to-be-built mansions in all their glossy beauty, as well as notebooks, Post-it notes and pens embossed with Slade Homes. The second drawer similarly held little of interest: a Yellow Pages, two copies of Top Gear magazine, and several empty cigarette packets. As Sam reached for the final drawer, she began to feel slightly panicked. It had been nearly an hour since she’d left Wetherspoon’s, and Andy would soon start to lose patience. If there was nothing in this room of any use, she needed to get out of here before he came back and realised his key was missing.

  She knew that somewhere there must be some reference to Father Benjamin and what had happened to him. She needed some records, a file with paperwork in it. When she pulled open the bottom drawer, she knew she had found it and her heart leapt. Hanging files filled the entire drawer. The first two thirds were mostly bills, pay slips and a contract. She slid open the ‘S’ file, and pulled out a wedge of paperwork with the heading ‘Slade Homes’. Quickly checking the window to make sure the coast was clear, she perched on the end of the sofa and began to read.

  The file began with several written warnings from the Slade site manager to Andy about his timekeeping. Under the terms of his contract, they stated, he was to be on site every night, from 9 p.m. until 9 a.m., when the first workmen arrived. He was clearly not the most diligent of employees, as two of the JCB diggers had been broken into, and when the police had arrived, Andy was nowhere to be found. On another occasion, several sacks of cement had been stolen, the cost of which had been docked from his wages. There was also a reference to the tramp he had mentioned; clearly a nuisance but one who, according to Andy’s copied reply, stayed in the outhouse and never came near St Margaret’s.

  The final letter in the file concerned Father Benjamin.

  While Father Benjamin’s death occurred many years ago, on 31 December 1999, the underground sewers and adjacent tunnels remain accessible at this time and we must be extremely vigilant in order to avoid any such tragic accident occurring again before the final date of demolition: Tuesday 7 February 2017. If anyone is found in the vicinity or on the property itself, you are instructed to detain them and call 999 immediately.

  Underground sewers and tunnels. Sam’s conversation with Andy in the pub sprang back into her mind. What had he said? ‘It’s a rabbit warren that house, gives me the creeps.’

  She looked back down to the file. The article from The Times that had first pricked her interest was scrunched up in between the letters.

  The remains of an elderly man, 74, who was overcome by fumes while trapped in an underground sewer were discovered at a condemned mansion in East Sussex. The man, a retired priest from Preston in East Sussex, had become trapped after gaining unauthorised access to the property, an inquest has found.

  Born Benjamin Cook in Brighton in 1926, Father Benjamin was parish priest for thirty years.

  Father Benjamin went missing on New Year’s Eve 1999, but his remains were not discovered until 30 September 2016. He died as a result of hypoxia, secondary to exposure to toxic concentrations of hydrogen sulphide, Sussex Coroner’s Court heard on Tuesday.

  The inquest into the retired priest’s death was opened and adjourned before Coroner Dr Brian Farrell. Detectives said there was no third party involvement. Slade Homes extended its deepest condolences

  There were no other files of interest, and just as she was thinking she ought to leave before Andy came back, Sam noticed that there was a landline phone on top of the cabinet and that the red answerphone attached to it was flashing. She checked the coast was clear again, then walked over and pressed the button.

  ‘Andy, it’s Phil, pick up your mobile! Where the fuck are you? You don’t seem to be getting what’s at stake here. We’ve got one day to go. We’ve navigated a full-blown inquest and I don’t want this deal falling through because someone else manages to get locked in those tunnels.’

  Locked in? There was no mention of that in the article. Sam’s ears suddenly pricked up at the faint sound of an engine in the distance, and to her horror, she saw headlights slowly making their way towards the cabin. She jumped up, pushed the file back into the drawer and turned off the lamp, then ducked down, watching breathlessly as a blue truck approached. As she looked around desperately for a way out, she heard the vehicle pull up outside and the engine judder before being turned off, along with the headlights. The cabin was plunged into darkness.

  There was no second door, nowhere to hide in the tiny room. He had a vicious dog that would attack her if she made a run for it, then he’d no doubt call the police. She would lose her job. She would lose everything. As she heard footsteps coming closer, she knew she had only one choice. Pulling off her top, she jumped onto the stinking bed in just her bra.

  The door opened and the overhead light came on.

  ‘Hi, gorgeous,’ she said, trying to hide the panic in her voice.

  ‘What the hell are you doing in here?’ said Andy.

  ‘I wanted to surprise you.’ Sam’s whole body was shaking.

  ‘Did you take my key?’

  ‘Yes. You don’t mind, do you?’ She attempted a smile.

  ‘Yes, I do fucking mind.’ He strode over and glared down at her.

  ‘I’m sorry. I thought you’d like us to be alone.’ She gave a rueful smile. ‘Let’s have a drink and relax, shall we?’

  She climbed out of the bed and went to the fridge as Andy watched in silence. It was empty apart from some mouldy cheese and the dregs of a bottle of milk.

  ‘You’re all out. Why don’t I go and get us something to drink?’ she said, reaching for her top.

  ‘Why don’t you tell me what the hell you’re playing at?’

  ‘I wanted to surprise you. I thought you’d like it. I clearly made a mistake.’ She hurriedly put her top on. Her hands were visibly trembling as she reached for the door.

  ‘I don’t like people breaking into my property.’ He stepped in front of her to stop her leaving.

  ‘I didn’t break in. Please let me past.’ Her heart was hammering so hard in her ears that her head was pounding. All she could think of was Emma, lying safe in her bed while she was here trying to commit suicide. You stupid bloody idiot, she thought.

  ‘You’re lucky I’m a gentleman.’ He slowly moved aside and Sam darted to the door. As she stumbled down the steps, Andy’s dog, who had arrived back with him, began to bark at her. She felt sure, as she headed off into the darkness, that Andy was watching her, waiting for any excuse to let the vicious animal off the leash. She glanced back, and could see him standing at the Portakabin door, holding onto the dog’s collar while it strained to chase after her.

  With every step that she couldn’t find the hole in the fence, her panic increased. She could feel the lactic acid in her legs burning as she ran backwa
rds and forwards along the perimeter. Shaking the wire fencing and swearing under her breath, she tried desperately to hold back the tears. She needed to retrace her steps: that was the only way back to the car. She had to try and stay calm, but the barking dog in the distance was making her nauseous with anxiety.

  She turned round and launched herself back alongside the fence, but tripped on something sticking out from the ground and came crashing down hard. She lay for a moment clutching her knee, gasping with pain. She could feel it was wet with blood, but it was too dark to see her hand in front of her face. She assumed she had tripped on a tree root, but when she pulled her phone from her bag to examine the damage, the light from her screen caught the reflection of something on the ground behind her. Ignoring the pain in her knee, she leant over to look at it. It was a brass catch, like the one on the floor of the Mother Superior’s office, jutting out from the weeds and thorns.

  She started to pull at the undergrowth around it, gasping as thorns tore at her fingers in the dark. After clearing what she could, she found that the brass ring was connected to a cast-iron plate. She pushed herself up, yelping at the pain in her knee, and tried to pull it open, but it wouldn’t budge. It had a keyhole and it was locked.

  Moonlight spilt through the clouds and she stared up at the house, its empty windows appearing like hundreds of eyes watching her. The same eyes that must have watched Father Benjamin that night. What had the man on the answerphone said? It sounded as if the priest had been trapped deliberately in the tunnels under the house. Did this trapdoor lead to them?

  Suddenly she heard the dog barking again, much nearer now, and gaining. Sam began to run. The pain from her knee was excruciating, but she blanked it out. Any second now, the animal would appear and sink its teeth into her leg or arm. Andy would have had time to think; maybe realise that she had been through the filing cabinet and listened to the message on the machine. He would probably call the police and it would all be over.