3.

Darryl rubbed sleep from his eyes, still bleary and discombobulated. Just what had been in that incense they’d burned earlier in the temple? Some sort of mind-bending shit. He shied away from the half-remembered touch of his miscarried child in his hands, and rubbed his palms against his clothes, swapping the torch from one hand to the other.

The breaker box was in the cellar. Of course. They always were in these damned houses, and the cellars were always as spooky as shit. Made for good television, but unfortunately there was no camera on Darryl right at the moment. He supposed for a moment that he should be carrying his handy-cam – didn’t he issue the order that they had to be carried at all times, only exception being a trip to the bog?

No matter. He was just going to cross the kitchen, turning his nose up at the stale smell of KFC, open the door to the cellar, negotiate those damned rickety stairs, and flip the bloody breaker switch back on. He sighed. Then he guessed he’d better figure out just what the hell Stacy had been going on about. Deirdre had disappeared? In the house? What did that mean?

He should be excited. The show was going to be really bloody marvellous. Already they’d got so much more than he could have hoped for. He’d made absolutely the best decision, taking the old buzzard up on his offer of the house and all its ghosts. He shied away from thinking about the ritual he’d unwillingly been a part of that afternoon. There was always a price to pay, and really, no one had been hurt. They were just a bunch of crazy rich guys, bored with their yachts and fancy cars. Personally, Darryl didn’t think he’d ever get bored with a fancy yacht or car, but maybe that was the difference with having to work your way to the top.

And the top was where he’d be, soon. He pushed the cellar door open and grimaced at the shadows congregating at the bottom of the stairs. Still, nothing there to hurt him. Despite his line of work, he didn’t believe much in spooks and the like. He stepped onto the wooden stairs and gripped the bannister, thinking about that. Well, he believed, and god knew there was enough weird shit in the world to keep him busy for several lifetimes – he just didn’t think any of it mattered, or meant anything. Most of the time anyway, a haunted house was a place in need of a decent plumber. He never told the clients that though. If some poor sap had some spooky shit going on in their house, and it was enough to make a twenty or forty minute show out of, then he was all over it. He loved being a reality TV celeb.

Sure enough, the breaker switch had flipped off. He rolled his eyes at it, and switched it back on with his thumb. Light bleached the doorway at the top of the stairs and he nodded in satisfaction. Truthfully, he wasn’t in the mood for any shenanigans tonight. It had been a long day. Maybe Stacy would excuse him from leading the mad charge to find her girlfriend? If she was still inside the house, it wouldn’t take long to discover her hiding place anyway. He hoped Jeremy was on the case and behind the lens, then remembered he was, and felt good. All grist for the mill, or whatever the saying was. He could probably go back to bed; after all, he had to go back to the hospital tomorrow and visit Marcia. They’d lost their first kid. If that wasn’t a good enough excuse for one night off from ghost-hunting, he didn’t know what was.

He’d forgotten to pull the cord to turn on the light bulb down here. Something lunged at him out of the shadows, and the lights went out again, the kitchen no longer a welcoming shining at the top of the stairs, but just another shade of dark. He swung his torch around, and felt strong hands grab his head, a thick arm circle his neck like one of those big snakes you read about in National Geographic – what were they? His brain gasped for oxygen. Boa Constrictors, that’s what they were. Funny, he wasn’t even being killed by an Australian snake.

He couldn’t see the light from his torch anymore, and as the darkness overtook his mind, his last thought was a strangled desire not to have to be a ghost haunting this bloody house. Then there was nothing.