The dial on the machine in his hand twitched significantly, leaping a quarter way around the dial. He frowned. ‘I thought you said the house was empty,’ he said to his assistant.
Sian flicked the pages of her notebook. ‘I have it here. The Fleming’s left two weeks ago and haven’t been back since.’
‘Well, the reading I’m getting is significant. A large amount of electro-magnetic energy coming from that area.’ He pointed back at the kitchen.
Sian felt the hairs of the back of her neck start to prickle. No matter how many of these investigations she attended, she never got over that first thrill of fear and dread. Experience had shown her that there was nothing very much to fear – in fact she had only ever witnessed one manifestation and that was of someone’s pet dog. Not a very frightening image at all, but some feeling buried deep within her, and one she could not rationalise, told her that this house was very different to anything she had experienced before.
She remembered from the papers she had read about the case that there had been a number of physical manifestations, and an alarming amount of damage to both the property and the residents. Old Mr Fleming had been pushed down the stairs. He’d broken his hip, and it was the hospital stay that had precipitated them moving out. He flatly refused to set foot in the house again until it was, as he put it, ‘sorted out!’
Hinton was heading towards the kitchen. He glanced round. ‘Are you coming?’ he snapped.
The tone of his voice jerked her out of her inertia, and she trotted to catch up with him. By the time she reached the kitchen Hinton was standing in the centre of the linoleum floor, turning slowly in a circle, the meter extended at arm’s length.
‘There,’ he said as the dial twitched again.
He was pointing at a door. When Sian had entered the kitchen she hadn’t given the door much thought, but she was thinking about it now. She knew she was expected to open it, and she really didn’t want to. She had crazy and macabre images flashing through her mind, all sorts of gruesome tableaux were waiting for her behind that rather bland, cream-painted door. She started to back away.
Sensing her fear Hinton laid the meter down on the kitchen table and stepped forward, grabbing the handle of the door and twisting it sharply. He pulled the door open and a nightmare of teeth, claws and fur flew out at him. He cried out, took a step backwards and fell over his feet, tumbling to the floor and landing sharply on his knee. He hissed with pain and shock and glanced round as the cat skidded across the kitchen floor to the back door and without even checking its stride, shot out through the cat flap. Sian ran to the door but only just managed to catch a fleeting glimpse of tortoise shell fur as the animal dived into the overgrown shrubbery at the end of the garden.
‘Well don’t just stand there, help me up.’
She looked back at Hinton who was struggling to get to his feet. Pain had etched lines across his face and coloured it an ashen grey. She ran across to help him. Pulling a chair away from the table she helped him into it.
‘Bloody awkward fall,’ he said, rubbing his knee. ‘Damned nuisance – got a league match tonight.’
She smiled sympathetically then remembered the cat. ‘How long do you think it was in there?’ she said, approaching the broom cupboard cautiously. ‘The house has been empty for three weeks, but there’s no sign that it’s been shut in there for any more than a few hours. No mess, and it certainly couldn’t have survived for long without food and water.
‘It wasn’t real,’ Hinton said calmly. ‘It didn’t actually exist. Check your file again. The Fleming’s used to have a cat that matched the description of that one, but it died six months ago. Besides,’ he added as almost an afterthought, ‘it passed straight though me.’ Gingerly he got to his feet. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Let’s have a look upstairs.’
All the rooms were dead, cold and empty, and caused not so much as a flutter on Hinton’s meter. ‘There’s nothing here,’ he said.
It was the same story in the other bedrooms and the bathroom. Even the smells that the Fleming’s had described so eloquently in their report were subdued. Yes, there was a faint trace of an odour in some of the rooms, but nothing as strong as they had described.
‘What do you think?’ Sian said when they had checked all the rooms.
Hinton leaned against the banister, looking down the stairwell. There was something here. He could feel it. The incident with the cat had proved it. But what?
‘I’m not sure,’ he said. ‘Let’s check downstairs again.’
He was halfway down the stairs when he heard china smashing. Despite the pain in his knee he ran down the last few steps, pausing only to point his meter at the kitchen door. The needle was swinging wildly, arcing backwards and forwards across the dial. He shivered involuntarily. Whatever it was in there it was giving off a huge electro-magnetic charge, more powerful than anything he had encountered before.
They entered the kitchen together. The source of the noise was obvious straight away. Plates were being lifted from the dresser by invisible hands and hurled to the floor. One after another the plates were being destroyed, smashed down on the floor with such force that pieces of china were embedding themselves in the linoleum.
Whatever was causing the damage seemed instantly aware of them as soon as they entered the room. There was a momentary pause, and then one of the willow pattern plates floated from the dresser, hung in the air for a second, then, with astonishing force, flew across the room towards then. Hinton ducked and with free hand pushed Sian to one side. The plate sailed through the gap between them and smashed on the wall behind, showering them with sharp shards of broken china. Sian cried out as a large fragment of crockery sliced through the sleeve of her shirt, but gasped with relief as she realised it had missed her flesh by millimetres.
Starting as a low rumble a sound started to fill the room. It developed quickly into a chorus of whoops and squeals, underpinned by a deep guttural growling. As another plate was hurled at them Hinton grabbed Sian by the arm and propelled her out of the kitchen, yanking the door closed behind him. He heard the crash and felt the wood shudder as the plate smashed into it.
They were in the dining room. He turned to speak to Sian, but her attention was focussed on the wall ahead. He followed her gaze.
There was a bulge underneath the wallpaper, about the size of a small rodent, and it was moving slowly across the wall at about chest height. As it moved it formed a hump in the paper, but behind it the wallpaper was smooth, flattened down as if the hump had never been there.
Whatever was beneath the wallpaper was picking up speed, and the paper was making a soft hissing sound as it was lifted from the wall. Hinton jerked his head round as he heard the same sound coming from behind him. On this wall there were three humps, moving parallel to each other diagonally across the wall. And on the adjacent wall more of the things were creeping up from the skirting board.
‘We’d better get out of here,’ he said, but Sian wasn’t listening. She had moved across to the wall and was staring at the first hump as it zigzagged back and forth, her face inches away from it.
Hinton felt a spear of apprehension skewer him. ‘Sian, no!’ he shouted, but as the words left his lips something billowed out from the wallpaper attaching itself to the skin of Sian’s throat. She turned to Hinton, too shocked to cry out, a look of absolute terror on her face, her fingers fluttering at her throat, anxious to pull the thing off but far too terrified to actually touch it.
Underneath the wallpaper the rest of the creatures were moving in frenzy, sensing the attack. As the paper lifted and fell in their path it whispered and hissed, filling the room with a soft susurration. Hinton was across the room in two strides. ‘Keep still,’ he said as he grabbed the rippled wallpaper and squeezed. Sian was silent, but huge tears were forming in her eyes and rolling down her cheeks.
The jaws of the creature were like a steel trap and the effort of loosening them made the sweat bead on Hinton’s brow, but suddenly, with a sound like a si
gh of resignation the creature released its hold on Sian’s flesh. Hinton felt it writhe in his grip, the scurrying movement of tiny legs making him shudder. The thing was arching its back and twisting its head in an effort to bite him. At the sound of their fellow creature in danger, the other bulges in the wall burst open, like paper eggs hatching, and the air was filled with the sound of twenty or so of the creatures testing their wings.
Hinton grabbed Sian’s arm and hauled her towards the French doors, his free hand batting the things away as they flew at them. He managed to open the glass door and pushed Sian out into the garden. Two of the creatures had landed on his back and he could feel the legs scrabbling up his jacket as they tried to reach his throat. He threw himself backwards against the wall, grunting with satisfaction as he heard the carapaces crack on impact. As the creatures dropped to the floor he yanked the door open and ran outside, slamming it behind him.
He stood on the patio, panting, trying to get his breath back. Sian was watching him with tear-smudged eyes. ‘What were those things?’ she said.
‘At a guess...’ Hinton said, drawing the warm afternoon air into his lungs, ‘At a guess I would say they were elementals, some kind of physical embodiment of the power, or powers, incumbent in that house. How’s your neck?’
Her fingers went to the soft skin at the side of her throat and came away bloody. Hinton pulled a clean handkerchief from his pocket, folded it into a pad and handed it to her. ‘We’d better get you to the hospital. You’re going to need a tetanus shot for that.’
Sian was shaking. ‘They were real,’ she said quietly. ‘I didn’t think they had any substance... like the cat.’ She held the pad to the wound and started to cry. Hinton wrapped an arm around her shoulders and led her back to their car parked in a bay at the back of the house. He opened the passenger door and ushered her inside. ‘Wait here,’ he said.
She grabbed the sleeve of his jacket. ‘Where are you going?’ she said, something like panic in her voice.
‘Back in there,’ he said, and saw the fear flare in her eyes. ‘Don’t worry. Now I know what I’m up against.’
Sian chewed her lip, unconvinced and badly frightened but furious with herself. ‘I’ll come with you.’
‘No you won’t. This won’t take long, then I’ll take you to A and E, to get that wound looked at. Wait here.’
In the car Sian relaxed in the seat and leaned back on the headrest, closing her eyes. This was the worst ever. She couldn’t remember ever being that frightened. Whatever the creatures were, elementals as Hinton had said, or something else entirely, they had awoken in her a deep-seated, almost primeval fear. Somewhere, lodged in her race memory, was the image of these creatures. They were at once foreign and familiar.
She started as she heard a soft whispering, like tissue paper tearing. She looked down at her chest. Something was moving underneath her clothes. With trembling fingers she undid the buttons and opened her shirt.
In the expanse of flesh between her bra and the waistband of her skirt five lumps, no bigger than quails’ eggs were moving under her skin. And as she watched, the skin itself was turning grey and papery as the lumps moved around beneath it. Panic washed over her and she prodded one of the lumps with her finger. At her touch the skin broke and an indistinct head forced its way through the bloody hole.
Sian screamed, but the sound was blocked by a horde of scrabbling creatures chasing the daylight glimpsed through her open mouth. They crawled up her throat, over her tongue, scrambling over her teeth, hanging from her lower lip before dropping to her chest. Within seconds the car was filled with the things as they exploded from every orifice – from her mouth, her ears, forcing their way down her nostrils, crawling out from her anus and, in a cruel mockery of childbirth, pouring from her vagina.
She reached for the door handle but as her fingers connected with it the central locking mechanism activated and sealed her into the car. She caught a glimpse of Hinton’s denim jacket through the bushes surrounding the car. ‘Come back!’ her mind screamed. ‘For pity’s sake, please come back.’ And then she slumped back into the seat as, inch by inch, the creatures devoured her.
When Hinton returned to the car, about twenty minutes later, it was completely empty.
CRITICAL PRAISE
Incantations, by Maynard and Sims is an impressive collection of short stories with a variety of settings and characters: tales ranging from sinister and disturbing to the downright nasty. This is good modern gothic writing and the two authors achieve a graceful literary style with effective descriptions and a realistic sense of place, all written with an eloquent turn of phrase. BRITISH FANTASY SOCIETY
From the ambitiously menacing novella “The Business Of Barbarians,” to the calculating fright of “The Nice House,” Maynard and Sims revitalize the traditional thrills of haunted houses, ghosts, and witches by emphasizing the psychological turmoil of character’s minds. The result is a collection that works on several levels, appealing every bit as much to primal fears of the unknown as they do to our contemporary distrust of our neighbors, families, and ourselves. CEMETERY DANCE
The promotional text on the back cover of the latest collection from the writing team of Maynard & Sims claims that “If you think of these two writers simply in terms of traditional ghost stories—then think again—these are nightmares from a cracked modern landscape.” The contents of the book tend to bear out this claim. Although many of the tales are about ghosts, they aren’t what you necessarily call “traditional”. GARRETT PECK
One more thing. Varied as they may be, all the stories in this collection show a common under theme, loneliness. Some of the main characters are downright loners, others are just forsaken people, and all are lonesome individuals. This seems to be another lesson that Maynard & Sims want to impart: that loneliness is the true, scariest horror in our lives. HORRORWORLD
Released in the wake of their gutsy novella The Hidden Language Of Demons, the latest collection of fifteen stories, many of which are previously unpublished, from this talented duo has a somewhat harder edge than the ‘quiet’ stories of supernatural terror on which their reputation has previously rested. The qualities you expect from Maynard & Sims are still in evidence; deft characterisation, the assured manipulation of atmosphere and mood, plots that slow burn to a chilling crescendo. Yet things have changed; the power of suggestion is no longer sufficient. The bad guys still want your soul; it’s just that they’re a lot more willing than previously to go through your flesh to get at it. THE THIRD ALTERNATIVE
MAYNARD SIMS
www.maynard-sims.com
Thriller novels, Shelter, Demon Eyes, Nightmare City, Stronghold, and the three Department 18 books Black Cathedral, Night Souls, and The Eighth Witch, have been published mass market and eBook in the USA. The fourth Department 18 book, A Plague Of Echoes, is for August 2014. A standalone ghost story, Stillwater will be released in March 2015. A new Department 18 book 5, Mother Of Demons is due summer 2015
Falling Apart At The Edges, a crime thriller, Through The Sad Heart, an action thriller, Let Death Begin, a mystery thriller, are 2014 publications. A Bahamas trilogy, Touching the Sun, Calling Down the Lightning, and a third book, Raging Against The Storm are all 2015 publications.
They have written a screenplay based on the first two Department 18 books – this screenplay, their first, won the 2013 British Horror Film Festival Award for Best New Screenplay. They have also written scripts based on The Eighth Witch, and some of their ghost stories. They have completed two original, commissioned screenplays, one a mainstream drama currently out for funding.
Numerous stories have been published in a variety of anthologies and magazines.
Collections include, Shadows At Midnight, 1979 and 1999 (revised and enlarged), Echoes Of Darkness, 2000, Incantations, 2002, two retrospective collections of their stories, essays and interviews, The Secret Geography Of Nightmare and Selling Dark Miracles, both 2002, Falling Into Heaven in 2004, The Odd Ghosts, 2011,
and Flame And Other Enigmatic Tales, and A Haunting Of Ghosts, both 2012.
Novellas, Moths, The Hidden Language Of Demons, The Seminar, Double Act, and His Other Son have been published in 2001, 2002, 2003, 2007 and 2013 respectively.
They worked as editors on the first seven volumes of Darkness Rising, and the two annual Darkness Rising anthologies. As editors/publishers they ran Enigmatic Press in the UK, which produced Enigmatic Tales, and its sister titles. They have written essays. They still do commissioned editing projects.
Visit the Maynard Sims Author Page at Amazon
And find us on Facebook, Linkedin, Google +, Wordpress, Tumblr, Pinterest, and Goodreads under Maynard Sims, and Twitter on @micksims as Maynard Sims
OTHER BOOKS BY THESE AUTHORS
Maynard Sims / L H Maynard & M P N Sims
Thriller novels
Shelter
Demon Eyes
Nightmare City
Stronghold
Stillwater
Let Death Begin
Through The Sad Heart
Falling Apart At The Edges
The Bahamas series of novels
Dark Of The Sun (to be Touching The Sun)
Calling Down The Lightning
The Department 18 series of novels
Black Cathedral
Night Souls
The Eighth Witch
A Plague Of Echoes
Mother Of Demons
Story Collections
Shadows At Midnight
Echoes Of Darkness
Selling Dark Miracles
The Secret Geography Of Nightmare
Incantations
Falling Into Heaven
The Odd Ghosts
Flame And Other Enigmatic Tales
A Haunting Of Ghosts
Incantations Page 26