by Cat Knight
It wasn’t a stash of movies or TV, just two vials of pills and a bag of white powder.
She had no idea what the drugs were, and she didn’t want to know. She didn’t really know it was Rattler’s, but it could hardly belong to anyone else. No one else went into the basement. As far as she knew, no one else used drugs. Technically, she didn’t know Rattler used drugs, since she had never witnessed that event, but it was a reasonable supposition. More reasonable than believing in ghosts. She took the drugs and replaced the box, careful to make it flush. As she went up the steps, she wondered what she would do with the stash.
By law, she was supposed to call the Bobbies. She would explain the circumstances, and they would arrest Rattler—well, if they believed her. It seemed patently obvious that if the drugs were hers, she wouldn’t be calling the police.
But she wasn’t so sure the Bobbies would come to the same conclusion. She had read some incredible stories about police incompetence. No, she wasn’t going to call them. What she was going to do was return the drugs to Rattler and tell him to never ever hide his stash in her studio.
Would she can him?
Not if he promised to hide his stuff someplace else. As long as he performed, she had no call to get rid of him. She wasn’t judge and jury.
Yet, she knew she had to keep an eye on him. Using, while on her property, was verboten. At the top of the steps, another thought hit her.
What if Rattler not only went into the basement for the drugs? What if he was down there to prime the speakers too?
She closed her eyes for a moment as she considered that idea. Would it be so farfetched to speculate that perhaps, just maybe, Rattler managed to afford drugs because he was being paid to drive Julia from the studio? Was hiding the stash part of the scheme? If, for some reason, she called the Bobbies, and they investigated with the skill of Sherlock Holmes, wouldn’t they find the drugs? She was pretty sure Rattler wasn’t going to step up and claim them. And if he didn’t, the police had little choice but to consider Julia the owner of the contraband. She was pretty certain that she wouldn’t be able to run her studio from prison.
She knew she should flush the drugs down the loo and be done with them. Rattler would learn soon enough that hiding stuff in the studio was stupid and expensive.
Yet, she wanted Rattler to have a chance to admit his mistake, take his goods, and promise to never test her trust again.
But was that reasonable? In her office, she placed the stash in her desk and tried to push the decision from her brain.
Dump the drugs but put the empty vials back in the box? That way, she wouldn’t get arrested should the drugs be discovered, and Rattler would get the message without any embarrassing confrontation. Should he ask, Julia could admit her role. He might accept his good fortune and owe her a future favour.
That made sense. Better to get rid of the evidence. If she replaced the empty vials, then, well, even Rattler could read between those lines.
Julia marched to the loo and dumped the drugs. After the pills and powder disappeared, she grabbed the empty vials and headed for the basement. The next time Rattler showed up, he would be greeted by the case of the mysterious disappearing drugs. She almost laughed. It would be a case for Mr. Holmes of 221B Baker Street. And that would be where she sent Rattler if he wanted to argue about what she had done.
Julia made it to the bottom of the steps and faced the boxes—before she began to shake.
Chapter Eleven
The vials fell from her hands and bounced across the floor. Ahead of her was the wall of boxes, but they were not in the position she had just left. No, this wall of boxes featured half a dozen that had been pulled out to various depths—which was impossible. She had just left the basement, and she was bloody well sure she was the only person in the building. The front door was locked. The windows were locked. No one could have slipped past her office and found her way down here to mess with things. Well, she was pretty sure no one could do that.
She spun around, looking everywhere, and she saw no one.
Wait, she told herself. While she was in the loo, could someone have gotten past to create this chaos? She considered the possibility. The logical side of her brain said there was a very small chance someone else was in the building.
She didn’t like that side. The other half of her brain said there was no chance someone was in the house, no chance a person could slide past. More, how would anyone, with the exception of maybe Alden, know of her problem with drawers not flush? That was crazy, wasn’t it?
She wasn’t crazy.
But if there wasn’t another person in the house, how did the boxes get pulled out?
She couldn’t have it both ways.
If a person hadn’t pulled them out, then who or what had?
She was absolutely certain they had been flush minutes earlier. So, what had moved them?
Earthquake? Tremors? Construction?
She felt silly.
But what if it wasn’t? What if…
She didn’t finish the thought. She didn’t want to face that. Instead, she rushed across the floor, grabbed the empty vials, returned them to Rattler’s stash, and put everything back in place. Then, she did what she thought would be proof of something. She pulled out her phone and took a photo of the boxes.
She looked at the photo to ensure it showed exactly what she wanted it to show, including the date and time stamp. If they moved again, she would have absolute proof that her mind wasn’t slowly turning into mush. With that she went back to her office, and in case someone was hiding in some cubby hole she didn’t know existed, she locked the basement door. Let the jokester get out of that!
“GET OUT!”
The woman’s voice met Julia as she entered her office, and Julia stopped in her tracks.
Her lips quivered. Her hands trembled. Tears formed in her eyes and terror coursed up her spine.
Even though she had heard the voice many times and it hadn’t touched her, it petrified her. Julia fought the urge to turn and run, to simply go, but running wouldn’t do any good. Her fists balled up till her fingers hurt, and she wiped the tears from her eyes. She stomped to her desk and faced the door.
“YOU GET OUT!” she shouted.
For a moment, she felt justified. Let the jokester take that. Then, she realized that her shout had done no good. It hadn’t changed one thing. She was no closer to ending the persecution. It was simply a feel-good moment, nothing more.
It was like saying that devastating retort to some slight—an hour after the slight occurred. The riposte did no good, but it made her feel good. Feeling good was half the battle, wasn’t it?
No. Not good enough. She thought a moment.
Julia would fix something even if she couldn’t fix everything. If someone was using the speakers to scare her, then she would take that variable out of the equation. She knew the rafters were too high for her to reach, but she also knew there was a short stepladder in the basement closet. As she went down the steps, she wondered how difficult it would be to remove the speakers. They weren’t particularly large, but they might be screwed in or something.
From the utility closet by the studio she grabbed a small tool case. She didn’t keep a lot of tools in the building because they generally needed nothing more than pliers and screwdrivers.
She hoped the case contained what she needed. Unlocking the basement door, she flipped on the light and started down.
The first thing she noticed was that the cardboard boxes were still flush. That made her feel a little better. Not good, but better. She hauled the ladder from the closet to the first speaker and set it up. She didn’t really like ladders, but she had to do it. Case in one hand, and the other on the wobbling steps, she climbed until she could reach up and touch solid edges. Balancing carefully, she set tool case on the top of the ladder and wiggled the edges of the speaker.
For the next few minutes, Julia tried various methods to force it from its secure place. She twisted a
nd tugged and turned, but the speaker didn’t want to move. Whoever had placed it there meant for it to stay. For a second, she had the brilliant idea of pulling off the cover to see if it was screwed into the wood. But she didn’t spot any screws.
Frowning, she bit her lip and studied it. To her, it didn’t make sense to make the speaker too permanent since speakers routinely failed and needed to be replaced. Why was this one so difficult? She pulled it again, and it failed to reward her tug. Then, she followed her own reasoning and pushed it toward the rafter.
It gave.
At that point, she could twist it, and it dropped off its anchor. Had she been more careful, she wouldn’t have been surprised, and the speaker wouldn’t have fallen to the floor and broken its case. Luckily, it didn’t shatter, but she was pretty sure its speaking days were over.
She climbed down and gathered the broken box and laid it to one side. Then, she tackled the other one which proved simple now that she knew the secret.
Sitting down on the floor she pulled apart the pieces and regarded them, as if they were prisoners who would now confess their crimes. But, of course, they didn’t. All they revealed was what brand they were and some basic facts, but to her untrained eye, they were just speakers without wiring. They might have been part of a wireless setup at some point, but she didn’t believe they still worked. Then, the man spoke.
“LEAVE NOW!”
Julia sucked her breath in hard. Shooting upright to her haunches over the broken frames, she overbalanced and her hands thumped painfully on the ground. On tender hooks, she poised until she could balance no longer and then spun herself around, looking in the corners of the room. Nothing. Nothing anywhere. The only place that she was certain didn’t produce the voice was the mute speakers.
At that moment, she would have been happy to have someone with her, even Rattler. But she was alone. Well, she thought she was alone, and that aloneness made her more frightened.
She stared up the steps at the open basement door, wanting to make a run for it, and slowly forced herself up from a squatting position.
A shuffling noise made her spin on her toes.
It was the boxes. The boxes weren’t flush.
They had been pulled out again. Julia’s teeth chattered and a small cry broke from her lips.
If something were strong enough to move things around, was it strong enough to cause harm? That was a question she couldn’t answer.
She looked up the steps to the open door, and she remembered all the movies she had seen, the ones where the door always slammed shut and generally locked, leaving the poor girl alone with a fiendish monster. Her door hadn’t slammed shut, but would it?
Then, the boxes moved again.
Her mouth dropped open, and she gaped. They popped out, as if possessing some life force of their own, which was insane. There was a concrete wall behind the boxes. No humans, no strings, no magic. But they still popped out…until they spelled something. She shivered.
“GET OUT JULIA”.
She whispered the words as she read the message in the boxes. A coldness raced up her spine. She didn’t have time to debate. Breathing fast and shallow, she pulled out her phone and took a second photo of the boxes. It was the proof she needed when she spoke to Alden.
The door was still open as she started up the steps. Staring hard at the wooden structure, she willed it to stay that way.
No slamming. No Slamming.
As she walked toward it Julia battled the terror, keeping it under restraint. And it did not slam, which made her whisper a silent prayer of thanks, for just a moment.
“GET OUT,” the woman yelled.
Julia screamed and pelted up the stairs.
“GET OUT,” the voice shouted again.
Paralysed with fear, somehow Julia found herself pinned against the wall, knees pressed together, elbows locked to her sides, and her hands clenched. Julia stood and waited.
Her throat ached till it burned. Finally, unable to sustain immobility, she swallowed hard. Mercifully, eventually, her body started to unclench, and become alive again.
Unaware of how many minutes she had stood motionless, she slowly moved, forcing one foot in front of the other.
It wasn’t important that she think clearly any longer. What mattered was that she had to obey the woman. Julia had to get out, and get out as quickly as she could.
Almost in a daze, she gathered her purse and shuffled to her office door. She looked both ways and turned for the exit. Whatever waited for her on the outside was far better than what she faced inside. The front door shut with a slam behind her, she didn’t bother to lock it.
The next thing she knew, she was standing at the bar of a pub.
Chapter Twelve
“Shock,” Alden said as he placed the pint in front of her. “It’s shock, and you have to let go of it slowly.”
Julia grabbed the pint glass.
“Sip,” he added. “Sip and let the shock wear off. And just listen for a minute. No need to speak. Got that?”
She nodded and then started babbling, showing him the phone at the same time.
“Look at the boxes. See how they’re all pushed out. Note the time stamp, now look at the next photo.”
He swiped to it.
“You’ll see I pushed in all the boxes. You know how I like to keep things flush.”
“Don’t I!”
“After that, I went back to my office. That was when I decided to remove the speakers.”
“Speakers?”
“I told you about them, didn’t I?” He shook his head.
“Well, there were two speakers in the basement rafters, and I thought maybe they were the source of the voices. I went back down and used a ladder and tools and managed to remove them. So I got them down and looked at them to see if they were wired or something and that’s when I heard it.”
“Heard what?”
“The scraping; the scraping sound.”
Alden eyes quizzed her, but he didn’t say anything.
“Look at the next photo. After I turned because I heard the noise, all those boxes were pushed out again. And I was alone, Alden, alone! Well, I thought I was alone. No one was in there. No one I could see anyway.
He swiped again and gave a low whistle. “This is crazy,” Alden said.
“Read the message.”
“He knows your name?”
“Don’t ask me how. And I don’t know if it’s a he or a she.”
“That’s impossible. Someone had to move the boxes.”
“Not someone, some thing.”
“You’re not supposing— “
“I am, I am. I think the studio is haunted.”
He stared a moment before he finished his pint in one long swallow. “I’ll get two more,” he said and fairly ran to the bar.
Julia was into her third pint and feeling better when she and Alden decided on a plan. While he held out for a human explanation for the paranormal activity, he agreed that a haunting might, and probably should be pursued. It was one more path to be explored, so it could be excised from the list of possibilities. Winnowing the list was the goal, or as Sherlock had once said, after eliminating the impossible, whatever is left, no matter how improbable, must be the truth—or something like that.
She declined a fourth pint and held onto Alden’s arm on their way to the flat. Once there, it wasn’t long before he was snoring. As she slid under the covers, she ran the plan through her mind yet one more time. The plan started with Fred, the man who sold her a haunted house. Well, it might be haunted.
And she knew that as soon as she was over her small hangover, she was going straight to him. She fell asleep with that idea firmly planted in her brain.
“I’ve been expecting you,” Fred said.
Fred Sterling was tall, taller than Alden and far taller than Julia who stood just inside the door of the antique shop Fred owned. Glasses, long and thinning grey hair, Fred projected the image of a historian, someone dedicated to
that which was old and worth preserving. Teeth yellowed from cigarettes, he flashed a smile that Julia didn’t find attractive. Not that it mattered.
He led her to a French antique table and had her sit while he fetched tea. Julia was pretty sure she was in for some sort of recitation when Fred returned with a thick manila file he dropped on the table.
She was tempted to leaf through the file while she waited for tea, but that seemed like bad form. She had determined that she was not going to the studio until she had learned more, so an hour or two with Fred wasn’t much of a sacrifice. “It’s the voices, isn’t it?” Fred asked as he sat. “You’re hearing voices.”
“I don’t recall ‘voices’ being part of the property description,” Julia answered.
“Yes, well, that was the land agent’s idea. I wanted to reveal the voices. She didn’t. She said people would be put off by ghost stories. I assured her the voices were real. To which, she said that ghosts didn’t exist, so I was under no obligation to reveal what couldn’t be. Does that make sense?”
“It does to a land agent,” Julia answered. “Where do the voices begin?”
“So I sold it off for a song.” Fred looked up sheepishly. Julia didn’t answer. Fred cleared his throat. “I suppose we should start at the beginning. When I moved into the house and heard the…voices, I decided to unearth the property’s history. That’s a special talent of mine. I can find out everything about anything, or so I think. It took me a bit of time, but the story begins during the Second World War. The house was struck by a bomb and pretty much destroyed.”
“And people died in the house?” Julia asked.
“Oddly, no. The house was vacant as the owner had gone to Cornwall to be with a friend, their husbands being away at war. Since no one was inside, there was no search. The city engineer declared the house a menace, and they bulldozed it flat. Anything extra was hauled off to the rubbish heap.”