Spectre's Rest

by Nick Moseley

  He made a quick inspection of the other cabinets and confirmed that they were all jam-packed too. It was possible that one or more of them contained the information he and Desai were looking for, though Trev couldn’t see himself volunteering to go through them all to find it. The cabinet at the far end of the room was a different type, with very wide, thin drawers for holding large sheets of paper. Trev furrowed his brow. The description “large sheets of paper” might well include building plans, mightn’t it? he asked himself.

  He pulled at the top drawer. It didn’t move. There was a small brass keyhole in the face of the drawer, but no key. Trev leaned his full weight on the handle in the hope that he could force it open. The cabinet was made of solid oak and resisted his efforts with ease. He squatted to search the area around the base of the cabinet in case the key had been in the keyhole and had dropped out. As he did so, the light from the old lamp behind him flickered and dimmed.

  ‘Hey Mishti, check this out,’ Trev said, assuming that Desai had walked in and blocked out the light. ‘This old thing might have the building plans inside if we can get it open.’

  There was no reply. It occurred to Trev that he hadn’t heard any footsteps, which meant that either Desai had somehow levitated into the room, or…

  …or it wasn’t Desai.

  He was cold already, but his temperature seemed to have no problem with plunging a bit further. Still in a squatting position Trev swivelled to face the door. The dirty yellow light from the lamp had weakened to a feeble glow; however it shed enough light to illuminate the thing that was coming out of the wall.

  Just as Trev had seen in the common room on his first night at Spectre’s Rest, there was a shadow-figure forming on the wall. Unlike that occasion, though, it was reaching out of the wall towards him, its arms peeling free from the brickwork. Trev’s mouth sagged open but he couldn’t even manage a squeak this time. He wanted to call out to Desai for help, but his vocal cords were having none of it. Neither were his muscles, which had drawn the curtains, taken the phone off the hook, and turned up the TV so they couldn’t hear the instructions being sent out by his brain.

  The shadow-figure leaned towards him, its eyes glowing fiercely. It was trapped in the wall up to its waist and had to bend itself across the top of the filing cabinet in front of it. It shifted and blurred, its outline sharp and defined one second, fuzzy and indistinct the next. Trev’s eyes widened as its groping hands closed in on his face. When the figure’s fingers were only a couple of inches away, Trev’s muscles finally responded to his desperate commands and he threw himself to the side, away from its grasp.

  He hit the front of the filing cabinet to his left, jarring his shoulder against one of the drawer-handles. The pain gave him a bit of focus and he took a second to assess his potential escape route. The confined size of the room meant that he hadn’t got far to go to get out, but it also meant he’d have to run the gauntlet of the thing’s clutching hands as he went. There just wasn’t enough space to allow a safe run at it. He’d have to do some dodging.

  His heart was pounding so hard Trev was worried it might crack a rib. He got to his feet and crouched on the floor in a pose that might have looked something like a sprinter’s starting position to the untrained – or blind – eye. The shadow-figure was on the right-hand side of the room but it was stretching its arms across the aisle between the filing cabinets, blocking Trev’s exit. As it reached, the arms thinned, elongating as if they were made of black rubber.

  Trev knew he was going to have to take some evasive action to get past them. Although he had no idea what would happen if the thing got hold of him, he was sure that he didn’t want to find out. It was tempting to just cram himself into the corner and hope the shadow couldn’t reach him, but he didn’t know how far its arms would be able to stretch. The creature might even be able to drag its whole body free of the wall, given enough time.

  ‘Crap,’ Trev said, and dived forwards.

  The shadow’s left arm swung at him. Its length made it unwieldy and it missed, swishing over his head. Scrambling on his hands and knees, Trev looked around in time to see the right arm dropping towards him. He rolled to the side and its hand struck the floor. Trev shoved with his feet and slid on his back across the dusty floorboards. The shadow struggled to raise the arm but it had become a dead weight; the limb began to retract, being wound back in like a fisherman setting up for another cast.

  Trev rolled onto his front and got his right foot under him. He tried to push off on it but it slipped in the dust and he pitched forwards. He gasped out a curse but the slip had inadvertently saved him. The shadow’s left arm, rebounding from its previous missed swipe, zipped past over his head. Had Trev not fallen, it would’ve caught him on the back of his neck. Instead its momentum carried it right across the room, wrapping it around the shadow-figure’s chest. It ended up on top of the filing cabinets.

  Resisting the pulsing panic building behind his eyes, Trev got onto his hands and knees. He crawled unsteadily for the door. Behind him the shadow-figure made a noise that sounded a lot like a hiss of annoyance. Surprised, Trev looked back at the creature. Green eyes burning with unmistakable fury, it stretched its body as far out from the wall as it could, arms held out as if offering an embrace. Trev had never been a touchy-feely person at the best of times, and he definitely wasn’t in the mood for a cuddle.

  Not from a shadowy apparition of dark malevolence, anyway.

  Trev resumed his crawl, hampered by the need to look back and see what the shadow-figure was doing. Still trying to reach him, it writhed against the top of the filing cabinet, hands clawing at its front edge. In a dusty corner at the back of his brain Trev wondered whether the creature would have been able to pull itself away from the wall altogether, were it not for the cabinet apparently holding it back. If so, he was happy to thank the Lord for filing cabinets.

  The shadow-figure made one last attempt to get at him as he squirmed out of its reach. It strained against whatever force was restraining it and managed to gain a little extra purchase. It flung out its right arm, the limb stretching like a bungee rope. Its index finger just grazed Trev’s right calf as he was getting his feet back under himself to run out of the door.

  The whole leg immediately went numb. Trev’s sprint start was turned into a face-plant with no warning whatsoever. He pitched straight into one of the stacks of boxes next to the door, bringing the whole lot down on top of him with the kind of crash usually associated with the demolition of a building.

  ‘Trev?’ came Desai’s voice from below. ‘What was that?’

  Trev didn’t reply. He was too shaken up, and a Blue Peter annual from 1981 was digging into his kidneys.

  Desai’s footsteps sounded on the metal staircase, then came pounding along the balcony. She appeared in the doorway, one hand on her gun.

  ‘Trev! Are you all right?’

  Trev coughed out a mouthful of dust. ‘Shadow,’ he croaked. ‘In there. Alive. Almost got me.’

  Desai took her hand off her gun and drew her vapour weapon instead. The hilt was small, with a simple loop handguard. When she activated it, Trev saw that its blade was a long, narrow streak of green energy. It shimmered in the weak light. To Trev’s eye it looked like a fencing sword.

  Desai held out a hand for Trev to stay where he was, which he had little choice about anyway. She stepped past the Anglepoise lamp – lying on its side where Trev had tripped over it – and into the little filing room. Green light spilled out of the doorway, shifting across the walls as Desai moved about. Trev held his breath, but within a few seconds she was back. She deactivated her vapour weapon and stared down at him.

  ‘Nothing there,’ she said.

  Twenty-One

  Desai squatted and shifted the boxes off Trev so that he could get up. Feeling had returned to his numb leg quite quickly, but he still sat and massaged his calf for a bit before standing.

  ‘Tell me what you saw,’ said Desai. She’d adopted her usual
pose, leaning against a wall with her arms folded.

  ‘Is there any point?’ Trev said. ‘You won’t believe me.’

  ‘Just tell me.’

  ‘OK,’ Trev said, shrugging. He gave Desai a quick explanation of what had happened. As before, she kept her face carefully neutral during his tale. When Trev had finished there was a long pause while Desai considered her response.

  ‘I think we need to get you out of here,’ she said at last.

  ‘I’m not going to argue with that,’ said Trev.

  ‘That head injury wants looking at, for one thing,’ Desai said, waving a hand to stave off Trev’s protests. ‘I’m not saying that you’re imagining these things. Not necessarily. But you have to admit it’s worth checking out.’

  ‘I’m not imagining them,’ keeping his voice calm with an effort. ‘That thing touched me and my whole leg went numb. I can’t have imagined that, can I?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Desai. ‘This can’t go on, though. Either you’re suffering the results of that head injury, in which case we have to get you to a specialist, or there’s some kind of presence here that wants to harm you, in which case we have to get you away from it.’

  ‘Again, not arguing,’ said Trev, though he was annoyed with Desai’s suddenly cold attitude towards him. She was treating him like a problem in need of solving. ‘Grace will, though.’

  ‘I’ll talk to her,’ Desai said. ‘She might even jump at the chance to get shot of one of her problems.’

  ‘Or not,’ said Trev. ‘She’d also be getting shot of one of her scapegoats.’

  Desai tilted her head to one side, silently acknowledging the point.

  Trev swung his leg back and forth a couple of times, checking that the last of the numbness was gone. ‘If you can manage without me, I think I’ll go back to my room for a bit. I’m knackered.’

  ‘No problem,’ said Desai. ‘There were only a handful of books left on the list anyway.’

  ‘You might want to have a look in there,’ Trev said, jerking a thumb in the direction of the little filing room. ‘The cabinets in there are full of paperwork from Victorian times. And one of them’s got wide drawers for storing large sheets of paper. Might have some plans or something in it.’

  ‘I’ll take a look once I’m finished with Jane and have spoken to Grace,’ Desai said.

  ‘Has Jane turned anything up?’

  ‘Not a lot. A few snippets that seem to confirm that something was going on, but nothing to tell us what that something was.’

  ‘Right,’ said Trev. ‘Well, give me a shout if there’s any news.’

  ‘All right,’ Desai replied. ‘Want me to walk you back?’

  ‘I can manage, thanks,’ said Trev stiffly. He turned to make his exit and tripped over a box.

  ‘Leg’s still a bit numb,’ he said, getting back to his feet.

  ‘It’s no trouble,’ Desai said. One corner of her mouth twitched upwards.

  ‘I’ll see you later,’ Trev said. He gathered up the last tattered shreds of his dignity and left before he could embarrass himself any further.

  He was still cringing as he arrived back at his room. He kicked off his shoes and crashed out on the bed. The creeping cold that he’d felt in the library had permeated the whole building, and even with the blanket wrapped around him he was shivering. His stomach growled, reminding him that on top of everything else he hadn’t eaten since his snack-food breakfast.

  He was grappling with the choice between a visit to the vending machines and a potentially more hazardous visit to the staff canteen, when there was a light tapping at his door.

  ‘Hello?’ he called out.

  The only reply was more tapping. It was soft but insistent.

  ‘Who is it?’ Trev said, raising his voice.

  More tapping. Then, from the other side of the door, a deep voice intoned:

  ‘Suddenly there came a tapping, as of someone gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.’

  Trev wasn’t a man of culture – even when it came to yoghurt – but he recognised the line as being part of Edgar Allan Poe’s famous poem The Raven. He got out of bed and padded across the room to the door.

  ‘Whoever it is, you’re not funny,’ he said.

  ‘“’Tis some visitor,” I muttered,’ continued the voice, ‘“Tapping at my chamber door. Only this and nothing more.”’

  Bad Trev broke the restraints he’d placed on it and flooded his brain with anger. He was tired, cold, hungry and scared. And some twat thought it was funny to knock on his door and recite poetry, did they? Well, he had a few words of his own for his tormentor. And possibly a punch on the nose.

  Well, as long as they were smaller than him.

  ‘Right,’ he said, and flung the door open.

  There was nobody there.

  ‘NEVERMORE!’ yelled the mystery voice from somewhere down by Trev’s feet.

  Trev jumped back, lost his footing on the worn and shiny carpet, and fell down for the third time in the space of an hour. He scrambled up onto his elbows and looked down between his feet to see a black and white cat, which was sitting in the doorway and laughing hysterically.

  ‘Your face,’ said the cat, gasping for breath, ‘was brilliant.’

  ‘You’re over two thousand years old, for God’s sake,’ said Trev, standing up. ‘Shouldn’t you have grown up a bit by now?’

  ‘See, you’re confusing growing up with growing older,’ the cat said, strolling into the room. ‘There’s nothing you can do about growing older, and I should know. But growing up? That’s entirely at your own discretion.’

  The cat’s name was Oscar, and he wasn’t really a cat. Physically he was, but the furry body was just the latest in a long line of temporary residences for an ancient feline spirit that the cat-obsessed Ancient Egyptians had summoned to the earthly plane as a gift for Cleopatra, and had never got around to sending back.

  Oscar had been stranded for over two thousand years, moving from body to body as each wore out. He’d seen a large chunk of recorded history – empires rising and falling; bloody wars; plagues; natural disasters. By rights he ought to have been completely bonkers, but he’d managed to keep himself sane by not taking anything too seriously. As he’d once remarked to Trev: ‘Finding the humour in stuff is about the only thing that keeps me going.’

  ‘Yeah, well I could do without any more practical jokes on top of everything else,’ Trev grumbled. Secretly he was pleased to see Oscar. Behind the smart-arsed façade the cat had a very sharp intellect, and had forgotten more about the supernatural than any Custodian knew.

  ‘You asked for me to come,’ Oscar said. He jumped up onto the bed and scratched behind his ear with a hind paw. One of his eyes was green and the other blue. Trev found it a little creepy. ‘It’s taken me a whole day just to get in here. Managed to stealth into the grounds through the gatehouse, then finally got into the main building when some fat bloke sneaked out for a cigarette.’

  ‘Richie, probably,’ said Trev. ‘I’m starting to see why Grace keeps him close by. He can’t be trusted if he’s left to himself.’

  ‘He’s a human. None of you lot can be trusted if you’re left to yourselves.’

  ‘Whatever,’ said Trev. ‘Have you discovered anything useful since you’ve been here, or have you spent all your time planning that practical joke?’

  ‘Well, I’ve got a couple of bits of news for you. The first bit is that your Granddad called old Feargal and asked him to get you and Mishti out of here,’ Oscar said. He lived with Trev’s Granddad, and the pair of them had worked together for decades, along with the prudish Victorian ghost, Agatha. It was an odd team but it seemed to work.

  ‘We’re still here, so I’ll assume it didn’t go well,’ said Trev.

  ‘Nope,’ Oscar confirmed. ‘Feargal doesn’t want to overrule Grace just yet. He knows it’d kill her career. But he won’t put up with things the way they are for long. If she can’t dig up Corbyn’s killer pretty soon, sh
e’ll be relieved of command.’

  ‘If it means getting out of here, then it can’t happen soon enough,’ Trev said. ‘I don’t want to be spending Christmas in prison.’

  ‘I’ve been inside a few prisons over the years and I can tell you that this one is more festive than most,’ said Oscar, ‘though that isn’t saying much.’

  ‘You’re not helping,’ said Trev. ‘You said you had two bits of news. What was the other?’

  ‘Oh yeah,’ said Oscar. ‘Not so much a bit of news, in all honesty. More a general observation.’ He studied a paw for a moment. ‘If we don’t get everybody out of here soon, they’re probably all going to die.’

  Trev looked at Oscar. Then he ran his eyes around the walls, up to the ceiling and down to the floor.

  ‘What are you looking for?’ Oscar said.

  ‘With that kind of statement I was expecting something dramatic to happen,’ Trev said. ‘A demon coming through the door, a scream in the distance, that kind of thing.’

  ‘Sorry to disappoint,’ Oscar said.

  ‘Seriously?’

  ‘Not really. I quite like disappointing you.’

  ‘No, I meant about everybody dying.’

  ‘Oh right, that. Yes.’

  Trev threw up his hands. ‘Why didn’t you tell me that first?’

  Oscar frowned. ‘Now you mention it, that would have made sense. Most people prefer the bad news first, don’t they?’

  ‘Why will everybody die? What’s going on here?’ Trev said. He could cheerfully have throttled the cat at that point, but where was the fun in killing someone who could reincarnate?

  ‘I don’t really know,’ said Oscar, adding to Trev’s exasperation. ‘All I can tell you is that all my spooky senses lit up when I walked into this place. There’s something here. Some kind of presence. And it didn’t strike me as friendly.’