Haunted Lancashire (The Haunting Of Books 1-3)

by Jack Lewis

  “Hello, love,” she said. “I was thinking we could take a walk through-”

  “Why did you lie?” said Tamara.

  She wished she hadn’t thrown the letter on the floor, because she wanted to shove it in her mother’s face. Instead, she folded her arms and felt her cheeks heat up. Magma turned around. Half of her face was powdered and the other was without make-up, making one side seem decades older than the other.

  “I’m not one to lie, you know that,” she said. “But if you’d like to tell me what I’m supposed to have lied about, I’ll answer.”

  “How about you explain why the phone company cut your telephone line a month ago? I saw you, Magda. Talking with the phone against your ear. Was that an act for my benefit?”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Why did you pretend to be talking to Larry?” said Tamara.

  “I didn’t pretend. He rang me and told me he was unwell.”

  “Bullshit. Come on, Magda. I just tried using it. The line’s dead and there’s a letter sitting in your kitchen saying they cut you off because, surprise surprise, you didn’t pay the bill. How about you cut the crap and be straight with me for once?”

  Magda’s face looked stung. Her lips pursed into an even tighter shape than usual, as though she tasted venom on them. A menacing look lit her eyes.

  “Maybe the phone stopped working. Maybe not. But it doesn’t matter, does it Tamara? It won’t stop you talking to Harold, will it? All those conversation you used to have. Bet you didn’t know that I used to unplug the phone, did you?”

  A dark doorway opened. A memory spilled over the frame, one of being sat on the bottom step of the lobby with the phone on her lap, cord trailing across the floorboards. The deer and wasp banner loomed ahead of her, and the dull morning light shone dimly in the window. It was so early that the rest of the house was in slumber, and she knew it would be at least an hour before anyone rose.

  She remembered pressing the phone tight against her ears. Hearing Harold’s nasty voice whispering to her through the handset, speaking in tongues and riddles, sometimes breaking into plain speech to tell her secrets of the house. They were secrets that sent a chill through her, and made her want to run upstairs and wake her parents. She wanted to throw the phone across the room, but knew that she couldn’t. Harold croaked into the receiver and told her that he’d ring again and again, and that she would answer. Deep down, she knew he was right.

  Magda turned her back on her and pressed powder onto the other half of her face, every so often casting a sneaky look in the mirror at Tamara. Even across the room, Tamara could see her own dim outline in the mirror, and she saw the shadows of the hall gathering behind her. She needed to leave Towneley Manor for good.

  ~

  They drove down the path away from Towneley Manor, and as the car drew out from the gates, Tamara indulged herself in a fantasy that they were leaving for good. Barely ten minutes away from the manor and toward the village, the air above them changed. It seemed clearer and cleaner, like a lung recently cleared from infection.

  She’d tried to figure out why Magda had lied, but her patience had long worn away. She was an old lady who’d spent too long in Towneley Manor with only Larry for company, and her head had become as empty as the gloomy rooms. Maybe she’d lied to get attention, or maybe she couldn’t help herself. Perhaps she just didn’t like Larry. It didn’t matter. Soon enough, Tamara would leave.

  Billy drove with both hands on the wheel and stared straight ahead of him, so that his gaze seemed to focus not on the tight country road but beyond it, to somewhere Tamara couldn’t follow. Normally he would have had one hand on the wheel and the other dangling out of the window, letting the breeze tease over his fingertips. There was something reserved about him today, as though the seatbelt across his chest wasn’t the only thing restricting him.

  She thought about asking him about the book in his room, but she didn’t have the energy for an argument. If he wanted to read strange old books, then that was up to him. As long as he didn’t try to bring her into the conversation, she’d let it drop for now.

  “Maybe we could get a coffee while we’re in the village,” said Tamara.

  “I thought you said there was nothing there but an old folk’s home for the dying and a cemetery for the dead?” said Billy.

  “I was exaggerating.”

  “You’re too hard on this place,” he said sullenly.

  Glasspike was barely large enough to justify even being called a village, and it may as well have just been an extension of the grey road that led to it. A single high street ran through the centre, dividing in half a square of shops that were either closed down or on the verge of it. It was a place where few people lived, and those who settled here did so with reluctance. It was a tangled mass of run-down businesses, thatch-roofed cottages, and fields full of dried buckwheat.

  The future didn’t stretch out far beyond the confines of Glasspike, but the ghost of the past hovered over it like the branches of a mighty oak. Its residents walked with shadows on their faces, and they turned their heads and tried to hide from the series of decisions that had led them to live in the village. Some settled here because their family had grown bigger than expected and the cheap house prices gave them little option. Others were born here, raised in the village that was trapped inside a valley, with a sixty-foot cliff face on one side and mounds of hills on the other.

  Tamara had attended Glasspike primary school as a young girl, and she remembered the scowls she’d got when some of the adults realised she was from Towneley. The mean old hag who ran the local sweet shop refused to serve her, and made her stare into the laughing faces of the other school children as she walked out of the shop empty handed.

  “Tamara?”

  Billy glanced at her then the road. He was waiting for an answer, but she didn’t know what the question was.

  “I said,” he spoke in a gruff voice, “Do you not think you could give your mum a break? I’ve spoken to her a couple of times. We didn’t get too deep into things, but I can tell that she wants to make it up to you. And you never know, maybe it was your dad’s decision to send you away.”

  “Don’t get involved, Bill.”

  “Don’t get involved? I’m your husband.”

  She turned the volume dial on the radio and filled the car with music. It was the tune that they’d heard on the way here; the one that Billy had mistakenly took to be her favourite track. She twisted the dial so that it was even louder.

  “Listen,” she said, sarcastically. “It’s my favourite song.”

  They drove the rest of the way like that; both of them listening to music they didn’t like, and Tamara stewing over a husband who wouldn’t listen to her. She wasn’t blameless, of course. Towneley was such a sore subject that she knew she was too harsh on him.

  She found Glasspike and the people in it to be exactly as she remembered. The caregiver centre was in the middle of town, sandwiched between a shoe shop advertising a buy-one-get-one-free deal, and a deli with a window full of dried ham and sausages that looked mouldy.

  Tamara hoped that they could get the caregiver service to send a replacement for Larry. If they could just get someone to the manor for the next couple of weeks until Larry recovered, then she and Billy could leave. The sooner she got back to home and back to reality, the better.

  Ten minutes later they walked out of the centre with their heads hung low. The lady behind the counter had been helpful at first, but as soon as Tamara mentioned Towneley Hall, her manner became cold. She pretended to check a sheet in front of her, and then told them that there were no caregivers free, that all of them were engaged for the foreseeable future. Tamara was going to argue, when she felt Billy’s cold hand on her neck.

  Now, stood on the deserted high street, she was left feeling that the journey here was for nothing. She looked around her and saw shop signs decades overdue painting, and cracks in the road threatening to widen up enough to swallow the r
are cars that trundled down it. The village and the manor are both parts of one big creature, she suddenly thought. The evil land that stretched for miles was its skin; the old trees with their spindly branches were its hair. It felt her presence as she walked across its halls, and it watched her with giant, blood shot eyeballs.

  The place was beginning to get to her, she realised. She wanted to get away from Glasspike, but at the same time she couldn’t face going back to Towneley yet. Billy was the first to speak.

  “Think I’m going to check out the book shop, if you don’t mind,” he said.

  A second hand bookstore was across the road. The window display was bare, but she could see a wooden counter with an old-fashioned till, and a man sat behind it with a book opened in front of him.

  “No problem,” she said.

  “You coming?”

  “There’s something I wanted to check out,” she said.

  He looked at her strangely.

  “It’s just something from when I was a kid,” she lied. “Meet you at the car?”

  “Sure.”

  It looked like he was going to reach in for a hug, but at the last minute he gripped her shoulder and gave it a gentle squeeze. As Billy crossed the road and went to the book shop, Tamara headed back into the caregiver centre.

  The woman looked up from behind the counter. She dressed in a cardigan so dull that Tamara didn’t know if there was even a name for the colour. Her face was free of makeup, and she wore a white shirt that she buttoned up to her neck. On her fingertips were fake nails an inch long, as if she’d been given the choice of only dressing up one aspect of her appearance, and her nails had been her answer.

  “We haven’t had any new carers in the two minutes since you were last in,” said the woman.

  Her manner was all too prickly for someone who worked in the care industry. But then again, the people here didn’t work for free, Tamara thought. Caregiving was a business like any other, and most of the people worked to collect their minimum wage earnings and then go home.

  “I need the address for Larry Tremblane,” said Tamara.

  “I’m afraid I can’t give out employee personal details.”

  “I really need it.”

  “I’m sorry but-”

  Tamara patted her pocket. “He left his inhaler at the manor. What if he has an asthma attack? Are you going to explain that you wouldn’t let me take his inhaler to his house?”

  The woman scratched her fake nails on the wood of the counter. Finally she sighed, and turned her head to her computer and started tapping on the keyboard. Her nails made her progress slow, and Tamara wondered if it was wise to wear them if her work involved using a keyboard. A few minutes later, the woman scribbled Larry’s address on a piece of paper and gave it to Tamara.

  When she’d stepped back onto the high street she looked across to the bookstore window and there was no sign of Billy. She knew she wouldn’t see him for a while. When he went into shops, he usually got enthralled by the displays. It didn’t matter if they were selling clothes, sports equipment or games consoles, Billy was a marketer’s dream.

  She found Larry Tremblane’s house only a few minutes away from the high street. His house was completely smothered in ivy so that the leaves blocked every inch of brickwork and threatened to spill over the front window. It was less an aesthetic choice and more an act of submission, as if Larry knew the ivy would cover the stone anyway, and the only thing he could do was try and keep it away from his windows. The paint on his front door was cracked, and a door knocker hung from a rusty hinge. She pulled it toward her and then letting it fall back, smiling to herself as the bang disturbed the silence of the village.

  When Larry answered the door, he wasn’t the pale faced, shadows-around-the-eyes man that she’d expected. He was fully dressed in shoes, trousers and a shirt –buttoned up to his chin, of course – and his cheeks were a healthy red colour.

  She could see through to his hallway behind him, and beyond that was the living room. It didn’t look like he owned a television, though a radio sat on a windowsill and played a violin tune. His house looked spotless, with everything put so straight in its place that she wondered if he actually superglued things down so that they couldn’t stray.

  “I hope you don’t mind me coming,” she said.

  He didn’t make to attempt to move from the doorframe and invite her in, but nor did he look unfriendly.

  “Not at all, Tamara. It’s good to see a Towneley face.”

  “Well your face isn’t quite what I expected. Magda said you were ill, but you look much better. What was wrong?”

  He crossed his arms.

  “I felt a touch unwell on your first night at the manor, but after a sleep I was fine.”

  “Then why did you ring Magda and tell him you were too sick to come back to the house?”

  He turned his head to the side and looked at her in surprise.

  “I don’t understand.”

  “You told my mum that you were too sick to come look after her. Since then I’ve been trying to organise some kind of care for her so I can go home, but nobody in this bloody place will go anywhere near Towneley.”

  “I didn’t tell your mother anything,” said Larry. “I was ordered to stay away from the manor.”

  It was Magda playing her games again. That was the only answer. What did she think was going to happen? That if she acted helpless enough Tamara would just say ‘Okay, mum, give me a few days and I’ll move all my stuff here. I’ll uproot my entire life and live in this horrible house.’ It wasn’t going to happen.

  “I’ll kill her,” she muttered.

  “I’m sorry?” said Larry.

  “Magda. I can’t believe she told you to stay away. Look, I’d love it if you came back, Larry.”

  Larry folded his arms tighter across his chest. His face seemed to have lost colour in the last few seconds. The ivy smothering the walls swayed as a cold breeze hit it.

  ”It wasn’t your mother who called me,” he said. “It was a man.”

  “Billy?” she said, taken aback.

  “I didn’t recognise him. He had a rasping voice, and he was hard to understand. It was a man, but it wasn’t your husband.”

  She couldn’t think of anyone who would want to warn Larry to stay away from the manor. There was nobody who had anything to gain; no other family members jealously guarding the manor from strangers, and no men who wanted Magda’s affections to themselves. It just didn’t make sense.

  “Think you could come back? We’d love it if you did,” she said.

  Larry shook his head. He stared over her shoulder and beyond her, where the trees of Towneley Manor stood lonely against a backdrop of desolate fields.

  “I think not,” he said. “The man was very insistent and a little…threatening.”

  He stepped back and shut the door, and the rusty door knocker clanged as the door slammed. Tamara stood on the step and shivered. With nobody else to care for Magda until she was better, it looked like she and Billy would have to stay.

  Chapter Eight

  Something rattled above her and sounded like footsteps crossing over her head. Her pulse quickened, and she looked up to see that it was just an acorn blowing across the glass roof. It tapped along the mist-covered panes before falling into the gutter and laying still.

  Glasspike was long behind them, gone hours ago along with the afternoon sun, and now Tamara sat in the manor conservatory. It was an extension of the house that had been built out of wood in the early 1900s. It was changed to PVC sometime in the seventies, though the plastic had been stained dark to match the rest of the house. It was meant as a relaxing spot in the manor; a place where someone could stretch back on a lounger and read as the sun lit through the glass and made the whole room airy. The detail that was missed during its construction was that sunlight rarely reached the manor, and the rays what did were weak enough to die before they could warm the glass.

  Billy was upstairs in his room.
He’d bought a few books from the second hand store – Just some junky thrillers, he said – and then he went up to his room to read them. She was going to talk to him later. The air between them was as misty as the conservatory windows, and she needed to clear it. Ever since she had seen him sneak the book into his room, things had been strange.

  She couldn’t have seen an eyeball staring back through his keyhole, she decided. It was dark and she was tired, and she’d probably seen some kind of trick of the light. It was a simple explanation for something that needed an answer so that it could be forgotten about. Just like the arm chair, the person walking across the empty room, and the shadow in the window. Individually, they could all be explained away. But when you added them together, did they become something else?