The Dead Summer

by Helen Moorhouse

  “He wants to help the spirits. Like I said, he’d be nearby – we’d move operations to the B&B at the Abbot’s Rest so he’d be moments away if he’s needed. If there’s activity, or a manifestation, or if both spirits are strong, then he might be able to help them move on. That’s all he’s concerned about.”

  “You’ve certainly got this all planned out – logistics and everything. Just waiting for me to obediently fall into line and get these spirits all nicely riled up for your cameras. What exactly is in it for me, Will?”

  He looked directly at her, seeing that she was physically uncomfortable as she moved the heavy baby back to her original hip. “It’s a word I’m reluctant to use, but I think what’s in it for you is closure.”

  Martha snorted. “Closure!”

  “Think about it. You can get in your car and drive back to London today – I can’t stop you. But you know what you’ve experienced at that house better than anyone – and don’t say it hasn’t disturbed you. You know what you’ve seen and heard, and all the stuff that you thought you could explain but you couldn’t. If you just go and never come back, you’ll always be thinking about it – wondering was it real, or were you going mad. Wondering what the whole story was. Like why didn’t the spirit like you?” Will held out his arms to take Ruby from an increasingly tired Martha. She slid her into his arms, glad of the relief on her back and hips. “And I’m not trying to tug on your heartstrings here but if Gabriel’s to be believed then something awful happened to a child up there. Someone didn’t just wake up one day and brick him into a fireplace – there had to have been more to that little boy’s story, more to his little life – don’t you want to know what happened? And could you spend your life thinking that you could have helped but you didn’t? I don’t think you could – I don’t think you’re that sort of person deep down. And even if you don’t believe a word of all this, it surely couldn’t do any harm.”

  She hadn’t thought about anything that Will had said – hadn’t thought beyond just getting back to London and sinking into Sue’s spare bed. Will had a point. She was haunted literally in Shipton Abbey but he was right – she’d be haunted forever more if she didn’t see this through. Still, the thought of being alone in that house – particularly now that she knew what was there – terrified her to the core.

  “You’d be outside?” she asked.

  He nodded. “In my car, directly outside the front door.”

  “If this haunting is so intelligent, as you call it, won’t it know you’re there though? Know we’re setting it up, as it were?”

  Will shrugged, dancing absentmindedly from side to side to keep Ruby amused in his arms. “It could well do. We don’t really know. All we can really do is try to recreate as best we can the normal circumstances in the house and take it from there.”

  Martha watched as her daughter smiled contentedly at the constant motion. “Surely I could leave Ruby with Mary overnight, where she’s safe,” she said, her heart aching with love and terror simultaneously.

  Will shook his head. “I’m really sorry, Martha, but Gabriel feels that Ruby’s somehow key to all of this. I swear to you that she’ll be my main priority and I’ll keep her monitored literally every second of the way. Look at it this way – think of all the nights and days in that house that absolutely nothing has happened. Tonight might be no different and, whatever the outcome, I promise I’ll pack up my things and help you pack up yours if you like and we’ll head away from Eyrie Farm tomorrow regardless.”

  Martha reached out and stroked her daughter’s cheek. “Why night-time though? A lot of stuff has happened during the day.”

  “Fair point. Evidence suggests, however, that there is a greater chance of paranormal activity at night-time. Ghosts seem to prefer the dark!” He gave a weak smile at his simplistic explanation. He simply couldn’t think of another way to put it. “And if we had a thunderstorm like your baby-sitter – then ding dong! That would be even better!” He grinned, noticing that Martha’s face was beginning to soften.

  “Let’s not have a thunderstorm, eh?” she smiled.

  She looked up at the cloudless sky and back at her daughter, by now contentedly playing with a button on Will’s shirt pocket. She was obviously completely relaxed in his company and trusted him. Martha decided that maybe she should, too.

  “Alright,” she said. “One night only and for my peace of mind, like you say.” She looked Will in the eye, almost passing her trust over to him.

  “Good,” he said simply. “And don’t worry, I’ll keep you both safe.”

  Martha nodded and began to walk back to the hotel door. “You’d better,” she said.

  They walked back toward reception side by side, Martha unusually calm about what she had just agreed to do, emboldened by the heat of the sun on her bones. When they reached their table, Gabriel was gone and the table uncleared, but Ruby’s changing bag was neatly packed with her breakfast things, cups and bowls were straightened and a napkin lay in the centre having been used to wipe yogurt from the side of the bag.

  “Gabriel must have done this,” observed Will. “He’s full of surprises. He’s really upset by this case for some reason. That’s no excuse for calling you names, by the way.”

  “Oh, we both lost our tempers,” said Martha, feeling embarrassed about the way she had stormed out of the restaurant. “It’s obviously something he feels passionate about – if the shoe were on the other foot I’m sure I could bandy some insults around as well.”

  “Still though, it wasn’t called for, how he spoke to you.”

  Martha shrugged and picked Will’s BlackBerry out of the side pocket of the changing bag. “Don’t forget this. He must have put it there for safe keeping.”

  “Oh God, yes, I nearly forgot! My friend sent back the cleaned-up EVP – have a listen.” There were headphones attached to the device and Will held them out to Martha.

  “No thanks,” she said, shaking her head.

  Will looked crestfallen. “Oh. Okay. I was hoping you would, though. I’d be interested in hearing what you think.”

  Martha looked at his disappointed face and felt guilty again. “Oh, give it here,” she said and took the headphones, placing them in her ears.

  Will smiled and held the BlackBerry out of Ruby’s reach while he called up the email with the audio file. When it began to play, Martha’s ears were filled with a loud crackle and she jumped at the unexpected noise, but then realised it was just the crackle that silence made when recorded.

  For a few seconds there was nothing and then she was sure that she heard it. A tiny voice saying something briefly. Martha gave a start and looked at Will as it fell silent again. She took the earphones out. “I couldn’t make it out,” she said.

  “Listen again,” he replied.

  This time, Martha was ready for the little voice. This time, she made out two distinct words: “Go ’way . . .”. The exact way that a child would say it. Martha felt her blood run cold. This wasn’t just a sound in the silence. This was an actual voice. A child’s voice. A dead child’s voice. She thought she’d be terrified but instead found herself intrigued. There was a third word and she wanted to find out what it was. “Again,” she mouthed to Will. She made him play it three more times before removing the headphones. “I can make out the first two words, I think,” she said.

  Will looked at her, excited. “What do you think they are?”

  “Go ’way?” she said, hesitantly.

  Will nodded.

  “Like a child would say it,” added Martha.

  He nodded again. “What about the last one?”

  Martha shook her head. “That one I’m not so sure of.”

  “Have a go,” urged Will.

  Martha could see that her response was of urgent interest to him. “Well, it sounds a bit like ‘Manny-un’,” she said, realising how stupid it sounded when spoken out loud.

  “Exactly!” cried Will, making both Martha and
Ruby jump. “That’s what we thought as well – ‘Mannion’. It’s a name.”

  Martha nodded.

  “It gives us something to go on,” said Will. “We don’t know the gender but it’s usual that a surname alone would be used to refer to a man rather than a woman. We think that Mannion is the ‘M’ that Gabriel’s been picking up. I think we’ve got our man!”

  “Oh good,” said Martha, taking Ruby back from Will, filled with renewed dread at what the night held for her.

  Chapter 27

  Eyrie Farm. Martha had all but given up using the name Hawthorn Cottage. It was just wrong for the place – too twee, too sanitised. The original name was more suited to a place where some unspeakable act seemed to have happened.

  The place had started to look different too, she thought. She tried to remember what it felt like to look at the house and long to go inside, to be embraced by the cosy building and feel safe within its walls.

  Will was there alre·dy when she arrived back in the afternoon, the front door open, cables trailing from the rear of the Volvo through to the hallway. Martha was glad of his presence and the bustle of activity.

  “Welcome home,” he said ironically as she stepped out of her driver’s seat and looked up the house as if seeing it for the first time.

  Martha gave a weak grin and rolled her eyes before stepping around the car to retrieve Ruby from her car seat.

  Will helped her to carry her cases into the hallway and Martha stepped in behind him, slowly and deliberately. The place felt different now, as though it were alive. The interior was completely unchanged from the last time Martha had seen it. Why shouldn’t it be, she thought. What did she expect? That the ghost liked Changing Rooms and would have rearranged everything while she’d been away?

  She peered in each door along the hallway and finally reached the kitchen and placed Ruby on her playmat. Will was working in there, fixing small cameras to the fridge and the top of the cupboards. She felt safest where he was.

  “Now before you get a shock,” he said – Martha noticed that he didn’t say ‘fright’ – “Gabriel’s upstairs just giving me a hand. He’s going to go back to the B&B shortly and let us get on with things.”

  “Oh,” replied Martha, surprised. “I thought he wasn’t coming over today?”

  “He helped me set up some of the equipment just now and then said he had one little thing to do before calling a cab and heading back,” said Will, struggling with some masking tape as the small camera slipped sideways.

  The floorboards upstairs gave a familiar creak and Martha had never been so grateful to Will that he had warned her of Gabriel’s presence. It was bad enough being here, without thinking that things were going to kick off within five minutes of her walking in the door. She decided that now was as good a time as any to bring her case upstairs, with another person up there, even if it was Gabriel.

  “You alright if I leave Ruby here for a minute?” she asked Will.

  He grunted in assent, a screwdriver between his teeth.

  Martha made her way cautiously up the stairs, not sure what to expect. Knowing that there were two other adults in the house made her feel braver and gave the cottage something of a less-threatening feel than normal. She thought about how long she’d lived in her house in London – it had never made her feel nervous or edgy. When she was in a room she was in it – not thinking about being in it, not thinking about the other rooms and what might be happening in them, not anticipating noises of any sort. She realised that she’d been living on edge for the past month, almost without realising it.

  As she mounted the stairs she heard Gabriel cough from Ruby’s room and wondered had he done it deliberately to let her know he was there. She was grateful that he did, and that Will had warned her of his presence, because when she reached the top of the stairs she caught the shape of his huge bulk, dressed in black, leaning over Ruby’s cot. Had she not known he was there she might have died of fright.

  She coughed herself and Gabriel looked up to see her standing in the doorway.

  “Gabriel,” she said.

  “Hello, Martha,” he replied quietly. “I’m just finishing up a couple of things and I promise then I’ll be out of your hair.”

  Martha watched him and thought she saw him slip something under Ruby’s mattress. She’d ask him about that later. “No rush,” she said. “Just leaving my cases in my room.” She turned to cross the corridor, hesitated, and then turned back. “I’m sorry about earlier, Gabriel.”

  The big man shook his head. “I was totally out of line. I had no right to say what I did at all. I just get – very – worked up sometimes . . .”

  “Enough said.” Martha held up a hand to stop his apology. “Let’s just forget about it and move on, eh?” She smiled at Gabriel’s sheepish face.

  “Gladly,” he said and smiled gratefully in return. He took a final look at Ruby’s cot and smoothed the sheet down with his hand. “Right,” he said. “That’s me done. Have you got the number of a taxi firm handy by any chance? So they can make me walk all the way out to that road again?”

  “Let me take you – it’s just the Abbott’s, isn’t it?”

  Gabriel nodded. “Unfortunately,” he groaned.

  Martha grinned. He just couldn’t help himself.

  “Room there hasn’t seen a lick of paint since Diana was wearing see-through skirts,” he continued, rolling his eyes to heaven.

  “Come on. You’ll just have to drown your sorrows in the cheery bar to get over it!”

  Gabriel groaned and followed her out of the room, pausing for a second to look toward the chimney-breast as he left. Martha looked away. She didn’t want to have to think about all that yet.

  Having ascertained that Will wouldn’t let Ruby out of his sight while she was gone, Martha led the way to her car and unlocked it, allowing Gabriel to fold himself into the passenger seat.

  “My God!” he exclaimed, searching awkwardly for the handle to move the seat backwards. “Where did you get your bloody car – Toytown Motors?” He grunted as the seat shot backward and jolted to a halt.

  “Only half a mile thataway, Gabriel!” grinned Martha, engaging reverse and turning the wheel to manoeuvre the car around.

  “Point taken,” he said and tugged at the seatbelt.

  Martha made her way down the drive and turned right for the village. As she picked up speed, she settled back in her seat and glanced across at her companion. “Just out of curiosity, what exactly were you doing in Ruby’s room?” she asked.

  Gabriel searched for the button to close the window as he felt his carefully-styled hair ruffling in the wind. “Just a few words of protection for the wee thing,” he said.

  Martha was taken aback to hear this, and hugely touched. “Oh,” she said, aware that she hadn’t kept the tone of surprise from her voice.

  Gabriel smirked. “You didn’t think I’d care enough, did you?”

  Martha tried to backtrack. “No, it’s not that . . . it’s just . . . well, Ruby doesn’t sort of seem on your radar, I guess.”

  Gabriel stared out of the window in silence for a moment. “Both of you are very much on my radar, Martha. When there’s a child involved . . .” The big man sighed. “I had a wee brother. Well, I say he’s my wee brother but he was actually older than me. Died before I was born.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry, Gabriel!”

  The medium shook his head. “First I knew of him was when I met his spirit on the landing of my parents’ house.”

  A chill ran through Martha.

  “I was twenty-eight and in the army,” he went on.

  Martha swerved slightly as she turned to look at his face, to see if he were joking.

  Gabriel grinned. “Steady there – don’t be fooled – I can be very butch when I need to be!”

  “Blimey! I wasn’t expecting that!”

  “Anyway, there he was – this wee boy in short trousers and a side parting, on the landin
g looking as real as you or me, and he just said ‘Hello Gabriel, I’m your big brother’, and vanished on me. Scared the living wits out of me, I can tell you. Anyhow, I said nothing for a while – trying to take it all in. I didn’t know if I was seeing things, never mind if I’d actually had a brother. I started to see him every time I was on leave. Sometimes he’d just smile and vanish, other times I’d spot him watching me and he’d actually run away. Bit pointless, I always thought – why run when you can vanish? Eventually I asked my mother if I’d had a brother and the colour her face went told me everything I needed to know. His name was Laurence and he was drowned when he was nine. He just used to come back to see his baby brother.”

  Martha was fascinated. She couldn’t believe how matter-of-fact Gabriel was being. “And what happened?” she asked, eager to know the rest. “Did you help him pass on or whatever the correct terminology is?”

  “Och, no. I see him all the time – he’s my spirit guide. In fact he’s sitting in the back seat right now.”

  “Fucking hell!” exclaimed Martha and jammed on the brakes in shock, fixing her eyes to the rearview mirror, expecting to see a nine-year-old boy in the back seat. Luckily there were no cars behind her as she ground to a halt in the middle of the road. There was nothing reflected in the mirror.

  Gabriel roared with laughter.

  “Jesus, Gabriel! Don’t say stuff like that!”

  He continued to laugh and Martha couldn’t help but join in as she put the car into first and set off again.

  “Oh, your face was priceless!” he giggled, wiping the corner of his eyes with the backs of his hands. “He’s not there now but please don’t be scared when I tell you he was there a while back.”

  Martha’s eyes grew wide and she glanced again in the rearview mirror. She found herself unable to stop swearing. “Fuck off, Gabriel, you’re kidding me! There’s been a real live ghost in my car?”

  “Language, missy,” he chided. “Probably not the first time either! You see, the dead are all around us, just getting on with things, and most folk can’t see them. Some of them are aware of us and they try to interact, some are just carrying on doing their thing with no idea they’ve passed over and some of them are troubled and need our help. That’s what I try to do.”