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“The Network have provided a couple of SUVs for us, so while it’s not exactly traveling in style, they’re going to be getting the perks of free advertizing. You know how it is, everything needs to be shouted from the rooftops, and in this case the everything is the name of our show.” She halfsmiled, but there was a serious undercurrent to the jibe. Everything the Network was involved in needed to finance itself, so everything was monetized. Sometimes she half-expected someone to go behind her picking up her shits to bag and sell on eBay, it felt just that ludicrous at times. “The cars are loaded up, so, no turning back gang, we’re on the story of a lifetime.”
Maggie Carlisle ducked down to clamber into the Hummer’s passenger seat, needing the driver’s steadying arm to help her inside. She felt every one of her years, and there were a lot of them on the clock now. She didn’t tell people her real age, and the Internet was full of guesses. Some sites like IMDb believed she could be as old as ninety-seven, whilst Wiki had her down as a questionable eighty-one. The reality was somewhere in between.
The driver, bless him, couldn’t help but be a little handsy as he tried to settle her into the seat and belt her in. She didn’t mind. It had been a long time since anyone had voluntarily tried it on, though there had been a time when every cinema fan in Christendom seemed to want to try and add her as a notch on their bedposts. Most of them were probably dead now, and she’d out-live the rest of them, too, if she had her way. It was a small revenge, living forever. She’d certainly outlived all of the heroines she’d portrayed on the silver screen.
Maggie took a few deep breaths and smoothed her silk blouse and trousers.
She took out her large compact and checked her hair and makeup, then took a moment to make sure no one saw her straighten the wig.
The driver started the Hummer and drove off in a cloud of dust and spitting gravel.
––––––––
“A hardy hiyo Silver and away!” Zack said, slowly looping his hand in the air like he was twirling a lasso.
The rest of the group stood silently watching him from several feet away.
He grinned at his companions.
“Oh, come on. The Lone Ranger? Heathens.” He shoved his hands in his pockets and shrugged at them. The women walked away from him, toward the black Cadillac Escalade with the gaudy Ghost Hunters logo on the panels. “Two SUVs and a big old motor home loaded with state-of-the-art computers for Grayson? What on earth has the old bat promised the Network?”
He stood in front of their SUV.
Louisa clambered into the passenger seat and motioned to him to get into the vehicle. He got in and buckled up and put on his headset. “Wagons ho, man!” Zack said, putting his hand out of the window to give Daphne and Grayson the official Ward Bond signal.
“Forward ho and all the bull shit,” Daphne called, grinning.
Zack just shook his head.
––––––––
“Where is my Ferrarelle? It’s a tall clear, slender bottle with a bright red cap. It matches my nail polish and lipstick.” Maggie Carlisle tore through her Diane Von Furstenburg bags. They contained items for every situation, no matter how trivial. “American water is so dangerous. It’s full of stuff the government put in to make us docile. It’s not like it was at all when I was a girl. Believe me, I wouldn’t dare have it pass my lips.” She snootily sipped, being careful not to smudge her lipstick with her pinkie arched and extended upward from the bottle.
She opened her mouth like a fish and inserted the bottle.
Harris, her driver, tried not to watch, but it was a sight to behold, since she resembled a blow fish with her spiky wig. It was hard to imagine she had ever been the object of quite so much desire, but that was life for you, slowly dissolving beauty until only the withering personality remained.
She didn’t merely pucker, her cheeks inflated like balloons as she gulped at the water.
At a second glance in the mirror, he realized who she reminded him of: Dizzy Gillespie.
He had to look away to keep from laughing.
It was going to be a long journey to Mallam Cross.
––––––––
“Are we there yet?”
“You’re talking to us?” Louisa looked back at Daphne. The other woman was sucking at the ribbon of blood where she’d cut through her cuticle. “How many times have I told you, no blood sucking in public? You know how people react, watching you do that?”
“We’re not in public, we’re in the car.”
“So, you wanna explain your vampire lineage?” Zack turned around to face Daphne. “I mean, it’s pretty obvious, but which one of the strange seed was the blood sucker in your family?”
“Three times removed on Mother’s side, I believe. She always said I was about one third vamp, since there were interphylogenetic marriages.”
“Interwhat?”
“My great grandmother married a non-vamp and as far as I can tell, that’s where the gene pool started diluting. Up until then, the dominant gene was always vampiric in nature, but you’ve only got to look at me to see how quickly the non-vamp genetics can modify the progeny. I’m lucky, I really don’t have the urges others contend with.”
“Okay, but, I mean, if Great Granddaddy liked Great Granny so much, why didn’t he take a bite? Make her immortal?”
Daphne gave her a nauseated look. “There is no forever,” she explained. “Human and animal diseases have taken their toll.”
“Okay, but I mean, they’ve got an infinite supply of blood on tap, why not just take the odd hit from each other?”
“Frankly ... incestuous. I mean, how would you like having your dad take a nip off you? Or your mom or your brother? You do know it’s all very sexual, this feeding, right?”
“So, what did they do? Just ... I dunno ... curl up on the floor like junkies with withdrawal?”
“Ha. Bloody hell. No. They fed on sheep, goats, cows. For a while that was okay. But then they all got screwed up with growth hormones and antibiotics in the feed. I’m sure you can imagine the kind of shit that stuff does to your half-human metabolism. Organic farming became a blessing. Long live the hipsters for the nice, clean, safe, healthy bloodline they’ve opened for us all.” She grinned.
Zack winced through much of the conversation.
He kept moving his hands about the steering wheel. Part of him struggled to believe that there was anything outré about the woman, and that it wasn’t all just affectation, an obsession with Death, capital D, and all things Goth.
“So, do you celebrate Christmas? I mean ... Turkey and trimmings?”
“Ha, we do a raw slab of cow. Sometimes we throw it into the oven to warm the blood and make it drizzle. Some mulled red wine. Veggies optional.”
“I’m sorry,” Zack said, looking at her through the mirror. “You’re making this shit up.”
Daphne rolled her eyes and kept sucking on her middle finger.
“Do your folks have ... ” Louisa mimed fangs. “You know?”
“Ha! No. Good lord. Talk about old wives’ tales. That’s not how you do it at all. You stick and sip. Slashing a wrist looks like a suicide attempt. Keep it nice and simple. I’ve never met anyone that had to drink a whole body dry. That’s basically the vamp version of an alcoholic. Maybe a pint. You realize we do eat regular food, just like everyone else. We need vitamins and minerals.”
“No neck bites?”
“Only if you’re a gymnast. It’s just not practical. We’re big on practicality, my people. Femoral artery is good with people who are dying in an accident, quick and efficient. No one is any the wiser. And we’re not monsters, we don’t take a life on purpose. My brother is a paramedic. If the person is going to be a DOA, he’ll siphon off a pint for the family. My cousin has his own funeral business, he’s generous with his resources from clients. A very tidy operation. I have another relative who’s a coroner.” She shrugged. “It all works out.”
“Should we be nervous?” Louisa punched Zack on the arm.
He gave her a quick disgruntled look, not taking his eyes from Daphne in the mirror.
“I’ve got my eye on Zack, tasty little morsel he looks,” she said, and grinned. “Nah, all I need is a tasty treat from a ripped nail or cuticle or an occasional cut. Nothing much. Fear not.” Daphne was quiet for a few minutes. “Or, of course, I could be full of bull-shit and having some fun at your expense.”
“Funny woman,” Zack said, but maybe she wasn’t joking?
––––––––
“Halloo?” Maggie Carlisle called out, ringing the bell at the check-in desk at the Silver Bough again and again.
She drummed her false nails on the counter.
What was that smell?
She couldn’t place it for the life of her.
The elderly actress rang the bell again.
She knew they didn’t want her here, but she was damned if she was going to let them treat her like this.
She pushed behind the desk and started going through the keys, reading the names of the suites keys, deciding where she was going to decamp.
Harris waited patiently behind her, bags in hand, as she opted for the Cailleach Bheur Suite.
“Bring the bags,” she told him, indicating the stairs that led up to the second-floor suite. She didn’t wait for him. She stumped up the stairs, noticing that the individual risers were almost threadbare in the middle from the shuffle of guests’ feet over the years.
Harris looked at the bags and decided on the smallest two. The nowhere-to-be-seen staff could struggle with the traveling chest. His mother didn’t raise a fool.
He took the small European styled elevator to the second floor where Maggie waited.
He moved to the side, to make room for her to walk in front of him into the suite, then, while she checked out the bathroom and bedroom, put her luggage on the stand. She busied through into the room, opening both bags and began pulling out items to put them on display, making herself very much at home.
“I’ll just have to make do,” she said. “Why don’t you go and find yourself a nice room? It’s on the Network’s dime, so no need to worry. We’ll get you ensconced then think about finding some food.”
Harris nodded. It was always easiest to just tug the forelock and say, “Yes, ma’am.”
––––––––
“What the hell is all of this?” Seamus stopped dead in his tracks. “A convoy?”
He stared at Maggie’s hummer, the Escalade and the RV that had been delivered for Grayson’s mobile command center.
“Miranda, please tell me you didn’t go through all of the dead guests’ cards and max them out?”
His wife came around the corner of the house and shook her head at the sight of the automobile menagerie in their parking lot.
“Nothing to do with me,” she assured him. Which meant more guests. Hopefully these ones wouldn’t go up in smoke.
They walked arm in arm to the RV.
Miranda knocked loudly on the door.
The door opened and a young woman looked down at the couple.
“Hey there!” she said, cheerily. “What can we do for you?”
“Hello,” Seamus said. “I’m Seamus, this is Miranda, my wife. We own the property you’ve parked on.”
“Well then. In that case you better come on in. I’m Daphne.”
They clambered up into the RV. It was like walking into another world. Computers with huge monitors and split screens, an array of laptops, surround sound, digital cameras and hand-held video cams and so much more tech. One of the screens showed the parking lot, meaning they had outside cams focussed on the surrounding driveway. The leather furnishings looked like they belonged in a high-end corporate office.
“I really hope this isn’t tapped into my electricity supply,” Seamus said, shaking his head at the vast array of power hungry gadgets.
“Nope,” the guy at one of the consoles assured them. “We’re self-sufficient in here. Got full satellite hook-up for internet and solar panels generating our own juice. Otherwise our utilities bills would be in the thousands. I’m Grayson, by the way.” He held out a hand for Seamus to take.
Miranda was glued in front of one of the split-screens, fascinated by whatever she was watching.
There was another woman in the rear of the RV who was poring over paperwork.
“That’s Louisa,” Grayson said. “She’s the boss, though don’t let Zack hear you say that.” He grinned at the last of the four, who was obviously the Zack in question. “Lou, come over here, you’ve got see this,” Grayson called back. She came to stand at his shoulder, as did Seamus. He had no idea what they were supposed to be looking at. The screen was full of readings that made absolutely no sense to him. “We’re getting some really weird readings from round about. I mean seriously bizarre. If I didn’t know better, I’d say we’re looking at off-the-scale supernatural, I mean everywhere, apart from one dead spot over by the town boundary.”
Seamus stared at the screen, trying to overlay the town map as he had it in his head on the hot spots and that single dead spot.
“You know where this is?” Zack stood behind Miranda.
She didn’t answer him immediately. Seamus knew where it was, or at least thought that he did.
“I think so,” she said. “That’s out the back a ways, isn’t it, Shay? Up on the hill?”
She didn’t get more precise than that, though Seamus had figured out that the dead spot had to correspond with the abandoned house up on the boundary; the one where the single light burned all night even though no one had lived there for as long as he could remember.
“What is it?”
“Honestly?” Grayson said, looking at the numbers. “If I was going to have to make a guess, I’d say it was the motherlode of all things supernatural.” Which was pretty vague at best.
“Ah,” Seamus said. “So, is this what you guys do?”
Grayson nodded. “We’re supernatural analysts. We’re here to study your ghosts.”
“You with that faker, Maggie Carlisle?”
“Is it going to a problem?”
“She’s not welcome here.”
“I warned you the old cow was going to be a problem,” Louisa said, shaking her head.
“She’s not wrong,” Seamus said. “She’s coming here with an agenda. She wants to tear our town apart and make us all look like idiots for ratings. We can’t let that happen.” Which, he realized as it was out of his mouth, sounded an awful lot like a threat. He didn’t fix that.
“Maybe we can come to an agreement?” Zack said. “Find some common ground, give you some assurances, and make sure we keep the old drama queen in check?”
They went through to the kitchen, talking earnestly about what they hoped to prove or disprove in Mallam Cross, and how they weren’t there to ruin lives. Miranda remained in the RV with Louisa and Daphne, fascinated by the gadgets they intended to use to monitor the supernatural activity of the town.
––––––––
“Anyone at home?”
Seamus opened the door to see Bilis on the stoop. “Hey, wild man.”
The ghost hunters were back in their RV, an uneasy truce established between them for now, though Seamus wasn’t sure how they could keep them out of town business.
“I hate to be the bearer of bad tidings, but our worst fears may not actually be bad enough.” Bilis explained what had happened to Griffin in Ella’s diner, not stinting on the gory details of the blood eagle or how Gilfaethwy had consumed the hapless Griffin. “I saw it all with my own two eyes,” the dwarf said, shaking his head. “But there was no way I was getting myself in their way. But that wasn’t the weirdest or worst of it,” he offered. The others waited expectantly for him to explain. It was the old storyteller in him, milking the moment. Finally, he said, “That was the way they seemed to be able to influence people, getting into their heads and making them do things, even if they didn’t want to. It started with Griffin, but they had Ella holding a steak knife to one of the patron’s necks, and Alvina, I mean dear sweet Alvina, who wouldn’t say boo to a goose, was acting like some sex crazed mad woman. I swear she ravished the poor bastard right there on the diner floor. Then they sent others out into the street, and set them to looting and breaking windows all around the town square.”
“Not good,” Seamus said, looking out of the window at the RV.
“Did Jasmine and Roxane come back through yet?” Miranda opened another beer and pushed it across the table to the dwarf king.
“No. We’ll feel their presence when they arrive.”
Deirdre said, “I scryed until Bilis came for me. Gwydion and Gilfaethwy are casting ancient Welsh spells on our ghosts, I’m sure of it, not just mind control, magic. And I don’t know how we fight it, and certainly not with them out there,” she said, meaning the ghost hunters.
“What do we know about the brothers?” Seamus asked.
“Gwydion was a magician from the Fourth Branch of the Mabinogi. His brother, Gilfaethwy, was no weaker.”
“The Mabinogi?”
“A collection of legends. Stories based upon Welsh mythology. There’s magic in the old stories, you know that. Sometimes writing about things brings them to the living.”
“True,” Seamus said, nodding.
“Gilfaethwy is a beast. He raped Goewin, the daughter of King Math, while his brother looked on. You need to understand that they’re from a time when common brutality and murder was part of the natural order. They’re unlike any dead we’ve ever faced. Gwydion won a battle against Bendigeidfran by bringing a forest to life to fight for him. These spirits are elemental. They are forces of nature. They are so many old hatreds and angers given form.”
“We can’t defeat them alone,” Bilis said.
“Maybe we don’t have to,” Seamus said, looking through the kitchen window at the RV in the parking lot.
“Are you sure that’s a good idea?”
“Nope,” he said.
“But we need to decide how we are going to deal with Maggie Carlisle and her crew. It’s not as if we can just lock her up in a cupboard.”
“Why not?” Miranda said, with a wicked grin.
“Speaking of, where is she?”
“Upstairs,” Seamus said. “She’s checked herself in,” he shook his head at that. “All the suite keys are gone, so I don’t know which one she chose, maybe the smoking underwear put her off a few rooms?”
––––––––
“Enter.”
Miranda found Maggie Carlisle on the chaise, eating Delafee chocolates and very much playing the diva that they knew and didn’t really love.
“You know the only decadent thing about those candies are the gold flakes?” she said. “Otherwise they’re just sugar, coconut oil, cocoa butter, milk powder and vanilla, pretty much the same as every other chocolate. It’s not like they’re Chocopologie. Now there’s proper decadence, Valhrona cacao and truffle oil, hand-made. You’re basically eating junk food and pretending it’s a delicacy.”
Maggie Carlisle almost choked on her chocolate.
“Who are you, girl?” the old actress asked, with that sneer of superiority Hollywood had ingrained in her. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, smearing the gold across her lips, which rather undermined that superiority.
She gave Miranda a beady eyed stare.
Miranda didn’t flinch.
She looked the elderly woman up and down and up again, but before she could say anything, Seamus came into the suite behind her and said, “I see you made yourself at home.”
“It’s adequate for my needs,” Maggie told them.
“Glad to hear it. But I should probably warn you the room’s last resident spontaneously combusted midcoitus.”
“I shall do my best not to get too amorous then,” Maggie said, obviously not believing him.
“I’m sure it won’t be a problem,” Miranda said.
“Can I help you, or have you just come to snipe at me?”
“Your people are outside. I believe they are going ghost hunting in a couple of hours. I thought you might want to go with them?”
“Ah, they are?” Maggie said.
“Can I ask you something?” Seamus said.
“Of course.”
“Why are you here? In Mallam Cross, I mean.”
“I would have thought it was obvious, my dear, I’m here to prove that ghosts are walking among us and we don’t even realize,” she said, looking straight at him, and not appreciating just how right she was.
Miranda and her husband exchanged a look. The idea of locking her in the wardrobe was getting more and more appealing the longer they were in her presence.
––––––––
Seamus saw the room nine key was gone.
It wasn’t hard to work out where Maggie’s Man Friday, Harris, had taken up residence.
They went up to room nine, and knocking, opened the door.
Harris was by the window, looking out over the lot. He was barefoot, and wore khaki pima cotton walking shorts with no shirt. Seamus noticed the elegant Blancpain 1735 on his wrist. That was one hell of a watch. Harris wore a Blancpain 1735 watch. It took a year to make and contained over seven hundred and forty moving parts to the mechanism. Street value was upwards of $800k, which was well out of a chauffeur’s salary, meaning Harris almost certainly did more than just drive the old actress from A to B.
Harris was well tanned, a couple of very obvious scars from gunshot wounds on his torso, and one serious knife scar that ran twelve inches.
“I’ve been expecting you,” the man said. “You must be the owners of this fine establishment?”
“We are,” Seamus said.
“Excellent. I’m Harris. Just Harris.” He smiled and gestured them into the room. He’d delivered the line with the same cadence James Bond actors have been torturing for decades.
“Your boss wants to go walkabout,” Seamus told him.
“The whole team are going out to investigate the town,” Miranda explained. “She said to tell you. I get the feeling she expects you to save her from any overly threatening ghosts.”
“Of course she does,” Harris said. “I’m surprised she’s even sober enough to consider venturing out.”
“The things we do for money, eh?” Seamus said.
“Oh, you don’t want to know,” Harris agreed.
Seamus couldn’t help but look at his watch as he nodded.
––––––––
There were two meetings going on simultaneously in Mallam Cross, one with the ghost hunters in the RV behind the Silver Bough, and one in Jasmine McIntyre’s lounge, where Bilis was holding court.
But where his fears were focussed very much on the arrival of two soul murdering spirits in the form of Gwydion and Gilfaethwy, Louisa was trying to corral her team into something approaching order as they brought their food and drink to the table.
“Okay, everyone, let’s get settled.” She motioned everyone to sit, which meant everyone. She saw the psychic leaning in the door frame and ushered her in. “You too, Maggie.”
She poured herself a large whiskey and put food on a plate.
She came to her table and sat down beside Louisa, unfolding her napkin slowly and placing it across her lap. She took her whiskey and gave her a wry salute with the glass as though to say okay, now you can carry on.
“Grayson will give us a quick rundown of what he’s picked up with the readings, there’s strange stuff afoot, that much is obvious.”
And it was.
Grayson went on to explain all the latest readings, including the single dead spot that he couldn’t explain out on the edge of town. He watched the mixed reactions among the team.
“I don’t know what it means. Everything I’d expect to see is inverted. You might expect one or two hot zones of paranormal activity across a region, if you’re lucky, but this, a single dead zone in a town that, according to every reading I can take, is the hub of all things paranormal. We should be seeing stuff everywhere. I mean, everywhere. Even here. Every single room in this place is registering off the charts.”
“Have you seen anything?”
He shook his head. “Any of you?”
More head shakes.
“Maggie? You’re the psychic. You getting anything?” Zack delivered that line with so much antipathy his dislike fairly oozed off his tongue.
“Well, now you come to mention it, dear boy, I have had a vile headache since we arrived in town. That would explain so much.”
“Indeed it would,” Zack said, not believing a word of it.
“We need something that will make good TV,” Daphne said.
“Trust the suit to state the obvious,” Maggie muttered.
“Doesn’t make it any less relevant, though,” Daphne said. “Whether it’s from the production side or the on-air talent. You’ve cashed in a lot of favors here, Maggie. We need something explosive.”
“Have you ever known me not to deliver?” the actress said, defensively.
“Of course not, or we wouldn’t have stuck our necks out funding this jolly,” Daphne said. “Between you, Louisa and the boys, we’ve got a goldmine here. We just need to open with a bang. I mean, a real Amityville kind of kicker that we can have in the previews. That’s all. So we need to put our heads together, think where we’re going to see the best kind of stuff, given Grayson reckons the whole place is haunted. We just have to find a ghost with a flair for the dramatic.”
“Like me,” Maggie said, gracing them all with one of those Hollywood smiles of hers.
––––––––
Bilis looked at his fellow townsfolk gravely.
“We’re in trouble,” he said, always one for stating the obvious. Sometimes it needed to be said.
“Those bloody ghost hunters couldn’t have come at a worse time,” Seamus agreed.
“Oh, they’re not important, whatever Jasmine’s concerns, there’s very little they can do to ruin our way of life. So what if they put the town on the television and try to make out we’re the most haunted square mile in the USA? It doesn’t matter, because it’s just television and people will assume it’s all made up. Worst case, it brings some lookie-loos with deep pockets who will keep the Logans in bread and jam for a while. We’re not exactly a hive of commercial activity, after all. No, the real danger is the brothers. I have spoken with witnesses to Griffin’s soul murder. Gilfaethwy opened his chest onto a void—a black hole sucking away at the core of his being—and consumed Griffin right in front of everyone in Ella’s.”
“Are you sure?”
“Can you feel him, Dee?”
His wife closed her eyes and reached out, trying to commune with the axeman’s soul. After a moment she opened them again and shook her head. “It’s as though he never existed,” she admitted.
And with those six words everyone in Jasmine McIntyre’s house realized the nature of the threat they were up against, and just how desperate their situation was. It went far beyond trying to fool a bunch of ghost hunters into thinking that they weren’t in the middle of Hauntsville USA.
Bilis offered some fairly gruesome details and was in the midst of explaining the fallout in Ella’s and the bizarre mind control the brothers seemed to be able to exert on the ghosts, as Jasmine and Roxane came back into the room. Bilis couldn’t help himself when it came to checking Roxane out. He was a sucker for tight sweaters and jeans, most likely because they didn’t have such simple attire on his plane of existence. And there was no getting around the fact that Roxane looked good for a woman knocking on five hundred years old. Beside her, Jasmine looked twice her age when in reality she was more than ten times younger. She held up a hand to Bilis, as though to ask: may I? Though she didn’t wait for the nod to confirm the dwarf king was ceding the floor.
“The universe has much to say with many stories to tell us, so gather about friends, there is much to learn and so little time for us to learn it.” Both women moved toward Bilis. “We have traveled the ribbon, and what we have seen out there ... it frightens me, Bilis. I don’t mind admitting that. The ribbon is out of line, allowing for unheard of activity from the universe.”
“Explain,” the dwarf king grunted.
“For the ribbon to function within the confines of normalcy, as we know it, it must vibrate within the creative ratio, otherwise it opens “doors” to dimensions we’ve never experienced. Fictional scenarios become fact, and history comes back to visit us, re-shaped by the creator. The ghosts become a part of the living.”
“And the ribbon is twisting and turning?”
“And creating unimaginable consequences for us to deal with.”
“You mean like you coming back from the dead?” Harris said, from the doorway.
None of them had seen Maggie Carlisle’s man enter.
“Death is both corporeal and élan,” Jasmine told the intruder. “Flesh exists in real time, even as you kill the body. Yet, your élan, or zest, goes back into the universe. Some refer to it as re-incarnation, which it may follow at times. You may come back as someone else, but one’s zest may merely venture into the universe as an energy. Given the correct conditions you come back as you were.”
“Is that what’s happening in this place? You get to come back as you were? I’m assuming you’re all dead and that’s what the readings on the nerds’ machines mean. All of those hotspots, the whole place has to be haunted, it’s the only thing that makes sense.”
Jasmine nodded. “So, you aren’t a fool,” she said. “The egress here allows for both. The day I died I felt my élan leave my body and travel the universe. There is no sense of time or physical awareness. But, I am aware of my existence in another stratum, as I move and intermingle with other energies. Conversations aren’t held at the level humans understand. It’s telesthesia and with it, I’ve acquired knowledge beyond anyone’s comprehension in this room. I have traveled the ribbon, explored various creative worlds, though with each journey my energy grows, and like a moth to a flame, I am drawn always on to the next twist. It takes some little strength to manifest into a physical form.”
“But why? I mean, in layman’s terms, what makes Mallam Cross so special? Why do all of the conversations converge here?”
“This is the source of the ribbon,” she said, like that made all the sense in the world. “And we need to find a way to untangle it before something worse than Gwydion and Gilfaethwy finds its way through.”
––––––––
“Where did Harris go?” Louisa asked.
Daphne and Grayson looked at each other and shrugged. Zack shook his head.
“Don’t look at me, my dear, I am not his keeper,” Maggie Carlisle muttered.
“Okay, well, we need a plan. I say we divide and conquer. Stack up on the gadgets, I want you measuring everything. If Grayson’s right and this really is the hub of all things paranormal we’re going to experience things out there, cold spots, frissons in the air, electrical charges, maybe even sightings. You need to be on your toes, get as much data as you can. Get it all on camera, Grayson. And pay attention to Maggie if she starts getting one of her feelings. It might only be a recon run, but we’re looking for the money shot, so let’s go and get one. Let’s make a show worth watching.”
“Amen to that,” Daphne said. “I know it doesn’t need repeating, but the Network have invested a small fortune in this investigation because dear old Maggie promised them she’d found proof positive of the Afterlife and that’s the kind of shit they can syndicate forever.”
“It’s all about the money,” Zack said.
“It always is, sunshine,” Daphne agreed.
“So, what’s the plan? Just go looking for trouble?”
“Pretty much,” Louisa said. “Gather as much intelligence as we can. Walk the streets, talk to people if you like, follow the readings, wherever there’s signs of strong activity, that’s where I want you and the cameras. Remember we’re going at this from a Quantum Physics angle, not some weird pseudoscience. Subatomic particles are our focus. Electronic signals, black body radiation, electron orbitals, smell receptors and protein structures.”
The others nodded.
“Let’s stay in close contact, people. We’ve got no idea what’s really out there, and I don’t mind saying those readings scare the fuck out of me, so, let’s be careful out there.”
––––––––
The ghost hunters moved out, driving slowly down Main Street, Mallam Cross.
Zack drove the RV’s mobile studio with Maggie and Daphne, while Louisa and Grayson drove the SUV.
The RV continued straight down the road, with Zack intending to check out the dead spot out on the outskirts of town because it fascinated him.
Louisa made a direct right towards the storefront of a small bakery. She’d thought about going looking for the local newspaper office. The town papers were invariably a font of wisdom when it came to all things gossip in Small Town America.
She parked up under the willows on the edge of the town square.
In her peripheral vision Louisa caught sight of a woman in her thirties with six small children walking along the pond. Three boys and three girls. She turned slightly, watching them, content to just enjoy the play of life for a moment, though it did strike her as odd that a mother would have such young children out so late. They were dressed in rags. The oldest of the kids couldn’t have been more than nine, the youngest, maybe three. The toddler had difficulty keeping up, so after a few moments the mother scooped her up and started carrying her, as they straggled through the weeds and longer grass leading down to the water’s edge. They weren’t dressed for the night, or the era, she realized, seeing the two eldest boys wore tattered knickerbockers with high top, laced shoes and torn Henley shirts, while the toddler was barefoot and had a long grubby white shirt over coarse cotton diapers.
Grayson came to stand beside her, watching.
They stopped, realizng they were being watched, the children crowding around their mother. There was a moment when they just looked at each other, then Louisa started to walk down the slight slope towards them.
“We jest lookin’ for ma’ man,” she said, pulling her daughters closer as she kissed the toddler gently on the forehead. The others stood behind her, trying to hide from the strangers. “Ah don’t know if’n you’ve seen ’im. He’s a good man. Ah know he must be missin’ us. He needs t’know we’s here. We couldn’t git back to let ’im know what happened. I know he wuz lookin’ for us.” She shook her head. The words were desperate. “We couldn’t git back.”
Her tears fell into her child’s ginger hair.
Just as Louisa started to speak, the raggedy family moved through her, passing clean through her flesh as though she wasn’t there. And in that moment of shared existence she experienced a consciousness of physical pain, accompanied by emotional anguish, all mixed in with a strange fluttering phenomenon before the family slowly dissipated, fading to nothing as they ran off through the shrubs and trees.
Grayson kept watching to make sure they were gone.
“I got that on camera,” he said, trying not to grin. “That moment when they walked through you. I got it.” The camera fed automatically back to the RV, meaning the short film he’d just shot was already uploaded onto the computers in there.
It was their first experience of the supernatural in Mallam Cross, good old-fashioned ghosts and no parlor tricks. The two dead girls at their mother’s side were the last to fade from sight, their auras changing to white in the seconds before they disappeared.
“They look so real,” Laura said, struggling to wrap her head around how it had felt in that moment when they had melded into her body and for a moment the auras of the living and the dead had tangled.
She’d seen herself on the computer before and knew that traditionally the cameras picked up an aura of purples and blues around her. She felt different now. Not that she could see her own colors, but she was sure that the moment of intersection had changed her.
That hunch was confirmed a few moments later when Zach emerged from the RV holding an iPad. He had a huge shit-eating grin on his face as he came towards them, promising, “You need to see this.”
The image quality, despite being High Definition, was poor because of the lack of light, but Grayson’s camera filters had captured the moment where her aura had diminished to a minor core as the white of the dead family surrounded and enveloped her.
“Bloody hell, look at your face, Lou, look.” She was looking. In that split second her face was that of the mother.
“This is amazing,” Zack said, swept away in the moment, because, for once, he knew for sure there was no trickery behind the camera. This, what he’d captured here, was the real deal. Ghosts. “It’s like you became her for a split second, or two, maybe.” He froze the image of Louisa’s face. The mother’s features blended into hers perfectly, taking over every dominant feature as they joined.
“Are you all right, Lou?” Daphne put her hand on Louisa’s arm.
“Fine,” she said, which was an exaggeration. “It’s just a bit ... weird.”
“I can believe that.”
What she wasn’t ready to share just yet was the fact that in that shared moment it had been more than just a few features that they’d shared. She’d felt the full emotional weight bearing down on the hopeless mother, and it was both confusing and fascinating all at the same time.
The overwhelming sense had been one of grief and fear, though more for the truth of what she intended to do to her wee ones, rather than for herself or her lost husband.
Louisa couldn’t begin to understand how a mother could think about murdering her three girls down by the pond, but she did. The memories were bright in her ghostly guilty conscience; she slit the throat of one, drowned another and hung the third one. Her boys fared no better. Her eldest son was found strangled in the alley, the middle boy smothered, and the toddler, by far the worst of all of them, was burned with hot coals on its bare skin to drive the devil out of it.
Those fragments of horror were alive inside Louisa now, as though she’d committed the acts herself.
“What did it feel like?” Zack asked.
“I couldn’t move,” Louisa said. “I watched them go through me. It stole the breath from my lungs, but even as I thought I was going to suffocate I felt this incredible surge of vitality. Energy.”
“That was their lifeforce,” the sceptic said, knowingly.
“Did you smell it?” Louisa asked the others. “All I could smell was rotting leaves and moulding dirt.”
“I didn’t smell anything,” Grayson said.
“Interesting,” Zack said. “So, for a moment at least you shared some sort of sensory transference.” He nodded, like of course that was what had happened, it made perfect sense.
Louisa tried to frame her thoughts, needing them to understand. “I felt as though I was looking out through her eyes for moment. Like I was her. There was something horrifying rummaging about inside my head.” She shook her head. She really didn’t want to remember. “They didn’t die peacefully, Zack.”
––––––––
“Look, brother, a chance to have some fun,” Gwydion said to Gilfaethwy as they walked down into the pond, enjoying the icy cold water on their skin.
They washed the blood from their skin, but there was always more blood.
Gilfaethwy’s torso showed no obvious sign of damage or discoloration from where it had opened up in the blood eagle to consume the axeman, Griffin, though, as the moonlight glistened over the streaks of water on his skin, the silver light did linger on a faint line of scar tissue that ran from throat to balls. It was the echo of the wound that had killed the Welshman all those centuries ago.
He scooped up handfuls of water and tipped them out over his head.
Gwydion noticed the motor home parked up on the roadside on the far edge of the pond.
He’d seen many oddities in the few hours since they had traveled the ribbon to this place, but of them all, this homestead on wheels was the most intriguing.
He gestured to his brother, then swam towards the pond’s edge, and walked out of the water like some creature from the deep.
He shook the water from his skin, and ran his fingers through the knots of hair as he emerged, walking through the tall grasses up to where the lawn had been mowed and eventually to the roadside. He walked around the RV, touching and smelling its lifeless shell.
“Curious,” he muttered.
“That it is, brother mine. Look, a light burns in the window. Shall we have some better fun?”
“Always.” Gilfaethwy opened the door and went in.
It was unlike anything they could have imagined, a great hall fit for a tribal king, and so much more. There were thrones of leather and eyes that looked out into all sorts of faraway places in this world, and maybe even the next.
They sank into two of the leather thrones, luxuriating in them.
On one of the counters Gwydion found an open bottle, still peppered with condensation sweat. The beer in it tasted as good as any beer he could remember. He guzzled it down thirstily and as he slammed the empty bottle down on the counter heard something in the back of the RV.
Movement.
He went in search of the sound, opening the toilet door on an old woman who sat huddled on the seat. He grabbed her by the hair and hauled her out of the cramped room.
“Brother mine, look at what we have here. More sport.” Gwydion propelled her forward, sending her sprawling across the floor.
She looked up at them, and for a moment it seemed as though she might scream, but then her face cracked into a smile and she said, “I can see you, spirits.”
“Be thee a witch?” Gwydion said, grinning like he’d just said the funniest thing.
“Or perhaps you’re a crone of ill faith?” his brother offered.
“I am no such thing, I am an actress,” she proclaimed.
The word meant nothing to them.
“Have you been sent here to banish us?”
She grunted.
“Oh, by our holy king, what is that sound? Her mouth is like none I have ever seen. Painted in blood? Perhaps she is feral?”
His brother shook his head. “Nay, brother mine, I think she is struck with half-wittedness. What shall we do with her?”
“I am here, you know,” Maggie objected as Gilfaethwy suggested: “There is water out there. We could try floating her. Weigh her down with stones upon her chest.”
“Let us burn her,” Gwydion opined. “Then we will be rid of her and continue on our travels.”
Maggie began moving away from them, shuffling back until she bumped into the back of one of the leather seats.
She looked up so see Gwydion leering over her.
“I think she’s frightened of us, brother?”
“Why don’t we give her something to be frightened of?”
“Well now, isn’t that a good idea. What should we do? The Blood Eagle?”
“Not yet, that’s only going to rupture her heart. Wouldn’t want her to go dying and spoiling all of our fun too soon, now would we?”
“Good point, brother mine. Something less visceral, then? Perhaps we should see how she feels about heights?” He looked up meaningfully towards the ceiling.
Gilfaethwy took hold of Maggie’s feet, pulling her from under the table where she was trying to hide.
She fought as best she could, but the struggles of a septuagenarian actress only made them chuckle. They lifted her, though for a moment Gwydion’s hand seemed to pass through the weathered skin of the old woman’s arm before it became once more substantial.
The brothers seemed intent merely to torment her rather than terrorize her, but that couldn’t and wouldn’t last. She needed to get out of there, into the street where the others were looking at the vapor trails where the murderous mother had faded away into nothing. She needed them here. Now.
She opened her mouth to scream, but before a sound could come out, Gwydion leaned forward as though to kiss her, and pushed his face into hers while his brother laughed encouragingly.
Maggie bucked against the intrusion, gasping at the invasion as the vile thoughts of the soul murderer oozed into her mind, possessing her far more intimately than she’d ever been possessed in her long life. By the time he withdrew, she was left gasping, sweat wreathing her body far more thoroughly than any post-coital sweats had in decades, if ever.
She sank back into the seat, shaking.
“I think she enjoyed that, brother,” Gilfaethwy smirked.
“I’m not sure enjoyment is the word I’d use,” Maggie managed. There was no fight left in her. She cursed her frail bones. She needed to get out of there, but how was she supposed to fight these brutes?
“Be careful what you wish for,” Gwydion said, touching the old woman’s cheek almost affectionately. He turned to his brother. “Can you imagine, all of her life this one has wanted to prove that things like us exist, brother mine?”
“You must be so happy now,” Gilfaethwy said, and nodding to himself added, “Now I understand the shortness of breath and the flushed cheeks.” His grin was wicked. “Do you want to feel really happy?” he asked, and in that moment, not waiting for her answer, leaned forward, putting his hand flat against her breasts, and pushing not so tenderly until his fingers sank into her and she felt them close around the warmth of her still beating heart. “All I have to do is squeeze and you can be just like us. You’d like that wouldn’t you?”
“Don’t kill her, brother. I want to smell her burning flesh and hear a few cries of pity.”
“If you insist.”
“It has been so long since we’ve heard some genuine screams of terror.”
“Remember when we had six women burning at the same time? That, brother, was delicious.”
“Indeed, it was. A choir of wailing to start the day.”
“It is always music to my ears.”
“You know what I want to do, brother?”
“I can’t read your mind, so no. I don’t. What do you want to do, brother?”
“I want to hunt.”
“Ah, now that is an enticing prospect, but do you think the old hag will offer much in the way of sport if we cut her loose and set her running?”
“Only one way to tell.”
“There is wisdom in that.”
“Shall we?”
They looked at her, as though trying to decide just how much sport she would offer, before Gwydion hauled her up by the hair and dragged Maggie Carlisle towards the door. Gilfaethwy opened the door for his brother to shove the old psychic stumbling out through it. She hit the ground hard, hands and knees grazing on the road as she went down.
“Run,” Gwydion said, almost like it was a suggestion.
“Run,” Gilfaethwy said. The word coming from his mouth was nothing like a suggestion.
Maggie struggled to her feet, looking from them to the rest of her team who were a few hundred yards away. It might as well have been a few hundred miles.
Gwydion flicked his fingers, like he was brushing her away, and she found herself running even though she had no control of her feet. Head down, she ran across the green towards the pond, and kept running, into the water. It lapped around her knees as she splashed into it.
The brothers followed behind her.
She wanted to scream, but her mouth wouldn’t oblige.
Maggie waded in deeper, splashing through the black water. Stones on the pond bed unbalanced her, turning her ankle as she stumbled on, until she lost her balance and fell forward with a splash. She went under, and seemed to stay under for too long, trying desperately to rise.
Then, finally, her head breached the surface and she gulped down lungful after lungful of sweet, sweet air before she went under again.
The moonlight shimmered across the water. For a moment the ripples smoothed out across the surface.
“Do you think she’s dead?”
“That would be a shame, brother,” Gwydion observed.
“Not dead,” Gilfaethwy said, seeing the fresh splashes as Maggie Carlisle struggled back to the surface.
The pond couldn’t be more than waist-deep where she was, but unable to control her own limbs, that was more than deep enough to drown in.
“Ah, she is floating,” Gwydion said. “Well, that’s no fun.”
“I wonder how many stones it will take to sink her?”
“We should try and see.”
They waded into the water after her. Maggie floated on her back, gasping for air, a burning pain spreading through her old bones as they put the first of the stones on her belly.
––––––––
Zack heard splashes from the pond, and for a moment didn’t understand what he was seeing.
Two men appeared to be hunched over something in the water.
Not something.
Someone.
“Jesus,” he said, pointing. Grayson turned the camera in the direction of the soul murderers in the water, and through the viewfinder saw the image focus down on Maggie Carlisle’s drowning face.
Without hesitating, he raced towards the water’s edge, still carrying the camera and trying to frame the shot.
All he could think was that they’d wanted a money shot to open the show with, and you didn’t get much more bang for your buck than a shot of two murderous ghosts drowning your psychic.
And then they all heard Maggie’s screams.
Zack raced past him, plunging recklessly into the water.
For a moment it was all there, perfectly rendered in the view-finder, captured on film, Zack running headlong at two naked men with fearsome erections who were trying to drown the old woman, and even as the taller of the two naked men grabbed a fistful of Maggie Carlisle’s hair and plunged her head beneath the surface, Zack was on him, and for a moment they were both in the same skin, ghost and man, and Zack’s fear and anger was enough to have their shared hand yank Maggie’s head back up out of the black water.
He yelled for help, with both Daphne and Louisa charging down into the water, but they weren’t the only ones. Harris, Maggie’s man, waded into the pond like some Ramboesque warrior advancing on the Viet Cong. His pure physicality was a match for the two spirits he bore down on, but long before the driver could lay his hands on either one of the pair, the dwarf king, Bilis, whispered the words of some ancient curse that caused the winds to whip up, and mist to rise from the waters.
It took a matter of seconds for the mist to thicken into a miasma, and even as it thickened more, the screams seemed to suffocate within the mist, losing shape and form.
Bilis placed his open palm upon the surface of the pond and breathed out a second ancient curse that sent a surge rippling through the water that hit the others like an electrical pulse, barreling them from their feet.
The dwarf charged into the mist, a fearsome foe despite his stature, wielding what appeared to be a hammer he had taken from the DIY store. As he waded deeper into the water, and further into the mist, the hammer appeared to shift form, changing and growing in might and heft as Bilis approached the two murderous ghosts.
They stood against him, no need of their own ethereal weapons because of their vile nature, and as Bilis swung his mighty hammer they seemed merely to absorb the shock of impact without any hint of pain.
Indeed, the mist seemed to be causing the pair more discomfort than the weapon, and the dwarf knew this, knitting it around them with his constant chant.
The words made no sense to the ghost hunters, but the enchantment wasn’t being woven for their ears.
Bilis delivered blow after blow, the silver hammer passing through the ghostly flesh of the brothers without touching them, and then all three were lost to those on the shore, hidden within the mists.
Ghostly sounds echoed back, filled with rage and defiance, though pain too began to seep into the sounds. The dwarf’s pain.
“We have to help him,” Louisa said, only to be answered by shaking heads.
“There’s nothing we can do. We can’t even see ... ”
A death rattle haunted the mists, and a final grunt, before a final word from Bilis scattered the miasma, and as the air cleared Grayson realized that there was no sign of the two naked men, only Harris, standing waist-deep in the water, carrying Maggie Carlisle in his arms as he waded back towards the shore, and the battered dwarf.
Disembodied words whispered through the last lingering strands of fog. “We must find more pleasure. I am thirsting.”
Then the words were gone, blown away on the wind.
“What happened?” Zack asked anyone who might have an answer as they crowded around Harris as he emerged from the pond.
“I bought us time, at some considerable cost,” the dwarf said, not elaborating. He was breathing hard and carried scars on his flesh that could only have been made by teeth. They were ripe and raw and red. “But they will be back unless we find a way to banish them.”
“Are you..?” Zack half-asked, not exactly sure how to phrase the rest of the question.
The dwarf took pity on him. “I am Bilis, King of the Antipodes, Lord of the Dwarves. My wife is Deldrid, sister to Gribalo, a fellow dwarf king. I have a little shop selling organic fruit and veg over there.” He pointed towards the far edge of the town square. “And I think I am dying. Again.” His fingers lingered over one of the wounds in his neck where one of the brothers had attempted to feast.
“Not exactly what I was going to ask,” Zack said, “But right now, pleased to meet you, Bilis. I really hope you’re not dying, because you’re a life saver.”
“And who are you, stranger?”
“I am Zack, no fancy title.”
“Well met, Zack No Fancy Title.”
Grayson finally lowered the camera, having filmed Harris’s emergence from the water with the unconscious psychic, and the few tender moments as he laid the old woman down on the grass and checked her vitals to be sure she would make it before he rose again, looking for a weapon that might suffice as he intended to go after the ghosts and make them suffer for hurting her.
“Where have they gone?” the driver demanded of the dwarf.
“I bound them to the ribbon.”
“Which means absolutely fuck all to me, little man. Where are they?”
“There are only a few places you can emerge from the ribbon, one is by the old stones.”
“And where the fuck are they when they’re at home?” Harris said.
“The dead spot,” Grayson said, finally realizing at least part of its significance to Mallam Cross. “It’s the only thing that makes sense.”
The dwarf nodded. “Though sense is a challenging concept when it comes to the ribbon of worlds.”
“Take me to this dead spot,” Maggie Carlisle said. No one had seen her open her eyes. “I want to see these stones and this ribbon for myself.”
“Are you sure you’re up to it?” Zack asked.
“Up to it? Darling, I was born for this. Grayson, dear heart, keep the cameras rolling no matter what. This is going to be great television.”
––––––––
Grayson followed the back street out of the village, filming every step of the way. So much of Mallam Cross was this quaint picturesque Rockwell slice of life. The town square, pond, the church with the white wooden paneling and the small cross on the ever so slightly askew spire, the school house and the convenience stores, nothing modern, nothing newer than the late forties. It was as though Mallam Cross was trapped in time. He followed Main Street out towards the woodland on the outskirts of town, and the granite obelisk that stood like a huge gravestone.
There was no cemetery, he realized, at least not on this side of town. He hadn’t noticed one on the way in, either, which felt strange. All of these charming old towns were built around equally charming graveyards with their weeping willows and mourners and memories.
But not Mallam Cross.
Did that mean something?
It had to, surely.
––––––––
It was a night for ghosts.
As they walked, they saw things, things that simply shouldn’t have been there. Grayson filmed an old man, with his wife standing beside him, banging at the front door of the dry goods store with a silver hound’s head walking cane. Through the camera, the pair’s auras were white, meaning there was no human body heat.
Over on the common, Louisa saw several kids playing. She walked silently across the street towards them, ushering Grayson to follow with his camera, until they came within twenty feet of the children. They were all ages, running in and out the bushes and trees, playing tag. Some called out, “Ollie, Ollie, oxen free,” as they played hide and seek, others climbed trees, hanging off their lower branches. One girl ran across the grass pushing a large metal hoop with a stick.
They hadn’t been there a moment ago.
They were watching the massive paranormal heart of Mallam Cross in all of its spectral glory.
She could smell the sour odor of bad food on them. All of the children suffered malnutrition. Starvation was their diet for their short lives. There were dark hollow eyes with distended bellies and rotting little teeth, bony legs and arms never bathed stuck out of their threadbare clothes, and hung on them, as if they were small scarecrows. Dirty, encrusted hair lay matted on their heads. Yet, they seemed so ... happy.
They were experiencing their lost childhoods.
They filmed for a moment, Grayson getting some good material, before they left them, not wanting to intrude on their happiness.
“Have ya seen ma’ wife and children?” A raggedy man wandered fretfully from the shadows of a side street, wringing his hands and shaking his head as he saw them. He was a desperate soul. He stopped and whirled about looking up and down the Main Street, reacting as if he’d seen or heard something or someone none of them could see. Then a moment later he cried and shook his fists wildly at the sky.
He caught sight of Zack and charged at him.
“Ma’ wife and childr’n? Ah can’t find ’em. Have ya seen ’em?” There were tears on his cheeks. He grabbed Zack by the lapels and shook him, desperate for the sceptic to say yes, yes, he had. “Ah come home, and tha’ wuz gone. Tha’ wuz blood all over the kitch’n. Tha’ chairs ’n’ table wuz knocked down and thrown about the room. Broken glasses ’n’ dishes wuz in shards ’n’ scattered on tha’ floor. Tha’ blood wuz still warm. Ah’d jest come in from the field to eat.” He turned away from Zack, bringing up a deep mournful cry, and letting it shriek to the universe. “Th’ winda’ was broke like a spider web and tha’ blood fillin’ in all tha’ cracks. Ah went onto tha’ porch and found ma’ Jenny’s apron balled up ’n blood. Ah held it ta’ ma’ face. It had her smell.” He relinquished his hold on Zack and fell to his knees. His entire body quivered. He looked up and wiped his greasy sleeve across his face. “At tha’ foot of tha’ steps wuz ma’ lil’ girl’s doll. Ma’ wife made it out of pieces of old clothin’. Sha’ went every wheres with Jenny. Sha’ made my Jenny smile and laugh. It wuz crumpled in the dirt. Fliez crawlin’ over it with ma’ babeez blood. Ah held it to ma’ chest.”
Grayson kept filming, listening to this man’s agony, holding the camera a few inches from his face.
And then he was gone, away into the thin air.
“Are you all right?” Daphne asked, reaching out to Zack.
“I really don’t know. I don’t fucking know.”
He stood there, staring at the ground. His arms went limp, followed by his legs. He sank down to the ground onto his knees. He felt depleted.
Grayson walked on shaking his head, this town ... this fucking town.
“Grayson?”
He turned to Zack, “We’re going to need the equipment in the RV.” He threw the cameraman the keys. “We’ll meet you up there.”
Grayson nodded.
––––––––
Up near the boundary, on the ground that had once upon a time been the prison known locally as The Hill, he saw a single dwelling, far from the rest of the houses of the town. It was a story-book house with steeply pitched roofs and rolling gables and sharp pointed eaves accentuated by turrets.
It was unlike any other house in Mallam Cross or for miles around.
Everything about the place was uneven and fairy tale-like.
He half-expected to see the silhouette of the wicked witch in the window where that single candle burned.
Bilis saw him looking up at the creepy old place. “That used to be The Hill. They knocked it down a long time ago. For years there was nothing there, then in ’47 this family bought the land off the state and decided to make their home there. Stayed in their family the whole time. The last owner was a writer. He disappeared in 2015. The light never goes out.”
“You sure it’s empty?” Zack asked the dwarf.
Bilis nodded.
“No one goes in there. Ever. Not since he died. But the old man used to keep a nursery, grew some rare fruits. We used to sell them in the shop. The day after he passed, I sent my Saturday boy up to pick up the next delivery. The roots were wrapped in burlap bags and a bill of lading was made out to us, and it was all sitting on the kitchen table, waiting to be collected. The lad said no one was here. No one had eaten breakfast, but it was clear they had dinner, the night before, so he went to check if everything was okay. The beds weren’t slept in and the house was clean. It was as if the old guy had just simply given up the ghost and ceased to be.” He shrugged.
“No body?”
“Nope. Nothing. Not a single hair or bloodstain.”
“But you said he died? How can you know if no one goes in there, and no one has seen a body in the last four years? It doesn’t make sense.”
“We’ve had our history of troubles here,” Bilis said. “Plenty of folks feared the worst, so we dredged the pond, we dug up everywhere you can imagine. Nothing.”
“No police or feds?”
“You know towns like ours, we keep things to ourselves.”
Zack shook his head. He looked at Louisa, who pointed at the candle burning in that one upstairs window.
They reached the granite stone. He rested against it, waiting for Maggie and the others to catch up with him. There was no sign of the naked ghosts that had tried to murder the psychic. The dwarf had said he’d bound them to the ribbon, which didn’t exactly make sense to the parapsychologist. He’d heard and used a lot of terms for manifestations and hauntings, and researched the lot of them, throwing himself into his work. He wasn’t one of these traditional television ghost hunters that traded on lies and stupid little tricks like using fishing wire to turn a tap on or slam a door because the fine filament didn’t show up on camera. He’d been talking to film manufacturers for several years trying to source a form of recording that might capture spectral activity, and it was only when he talked to a guy who had been fired from Kodak more than a decade ago that he heard about this weird experiment another engineer had been doing with different coatings on the film, and how they believed they’d discovered a way of capturing ghosts on film. Of course, this would be their first real test as Grayson had only just finished mimicking the process for their own needs. It seemed to work though, given what they’d managed to record thus far.
He ran his hands across the granite, feeling a deep thrum within the stone.
It looked like nothing more than a giant gravestone.
There was no sign of any ribbon. He would have to ask Bilis about that. He was hungry to understand. He thought it was his finest quality, but it was also the one abiding personality trait that drove others around him quietly mad.
They were slap bang in the middle of the dead zone. In a town full of paranormal activity, with ghostly manifestations capable of drowning an old woman in the middle of the pond, it was the one place that registered nothing on any of their equipment. Nothing. And there was an old storybook house right slap bang in the middle of that dead zone? He didn’t believe in coincidences. He never had.
“No one ever thought about buying the place?” he asked.
“We don’t tend to get many new people moving into Mallam Cross,” the dwarf said by way of answer. It was no answer at all.
He nodded.
The RV came juddering down the track towards them, Grayson at the wheel.
––––––––
The house loomed over them as they approached.
There were signs of decay everywhere.
Zack was struggling to wrap his head around the idea that this place was the odd one out, the one building in Mallam Cross that didn’t have some sort of resident ghost. It was an inversion of everything he understood about how the paranormal world brushed up against ours.
The track that led to the storybook house was badly rutted from the years of neglect.
Tufts of grass and weeds had grown through the bed of gravel, reclaiming it in the name of nature. Give it a few more years and it would look as if no vehicle had ever driven on this curving strip of land, he thought.
“This is it,” Maggie said. “I can feel it. Can’t you?”
She was much calmer now and in control of her senses.
Grayson had never seen her even flustered before, and despite the near-drowning she still somehow managed to look ageless and graceful through the camera’s eye. She leaned on Harris, who seemed happy to take the burden. She was a strange old bird, but there was no denying the fact she believed in what she did, and truly believed that Mallam Cross would be her vindication. Given what they’d already seen in the few short hours they’d been here it was hard to argue with that way of thinking.
“Why don’t you stay out here with Harris while we check the house out first?” Daphne suggested. “Wouldn’t want anything happening to the star of the show.”
“Nonsense, dear girl, this is my show. None of you would be here if it wasn’t for me. We go in together and face whatever fresh hells this town has to offer up side-by-side.”
It was a rousing little speech, made purely for the benefit of the audience who would no doubt see it in a few months, God and the Network willing.
She was letting them all know, especially Daphne, the Network’s eyes and ears on the ground, that she was still very much in charge, regardless of any near-death experiences.
“Are you coming?”
Grayson filmed her leaning on Harris as she walked towards the front door of the storybook house.
He looked up at the window where that one candle burned.
There was something about this place and the fact that it was a dead spot of paranormal energy in what was otherwise a hive of activity that sent a shiver deep to his core.
Daphne hurried after the psychic.
“Here we go again,” he muttered and followed the others in.
He hadn’t noticed that Bilis was no longer with them.