The House on Everley Street (Death Herself Book 2) (8 page)

Chapter Eleven

Today

Stopping at the front door, John took a moment to fumble through his pockets for the key. He'd been so focused on his own thoughts during the walk back to the house after leaving the book club meeting, he'd forgotten to be nervous. Now, close to midnight, he unlocked the door and stepped into the hallway, and as he did so he realized the fear had left him. The darkness of the house held no more terror, and he wasn't sure whether to feel relieved that he'd overcome it all or angry that he'd let the place dog his thoughts for so long.

Smiling, he turned to shut the door...

And found Hannah standing right behind him.

“Hey,” she said cautiously.

He stared, blinking a couple of times as if he expected her to vanish in a puff of smoke.

“So...” She paused. “I followed you. Is that totally awful?”

“You followed me all the way from the flat... to here?”

She winced slightly, as if the idea was excruciatingly embarrassing, before silently mouthing the word 'Sorry'.

“It's late,” he told her, even though he couldn't deny that her presence was... positive, in some way he didn't want to acknowledge just yet. Positive and definitely flattering for a man in his late thirties. “I'm sorry,
why
did you follow me?”

“Is this the house?” she asked.

“What house?”

“The one you talked about. The one that's haunted.”

“I...”

“Or
not
haunted, as you actually said.” She peered past him, looking at the stairs. “It doesn't look much like a haunted house. It looks like a totally normal house.”

“Aren't all houses normal?” he asked.

“Oh no,” she replied, suddenly stepping inside and heading over to look up at the landing. “I've studied haunting cases online, and some houses you can just tell by looking at them, they're haunted. It's a very definite quality that some of them just exude. I know that doesn't sound very scientific, but it's true, after a while you just develop a kind of sixth sense about the whole thing. Some houses give off a clear vibe that just seems to let you know there's something dark and nasty hiding inside. This one, not so much.” She turned to him again. “It just looks
so
ordinary. So normal.” She paused, before frowning. “Then again, maybe that's just what the house
wants
us to think.”

“I...” Pausing, with the door still open, he realized that he didn't quite have the resolve to ask her to leave, at least not yet. Besides, even though he was a married man, he told himself there was no reason why he shouldn't spend a little more time with someone who was clearly so interested in his work. Slowly, trying not to feel guilty, he pushed the door shut. “I'm afraid I don't have anything to offer you,” he told her. “No wine, no -”

“Ta-da!” She pulled a bottle of red wine from the satchel slung over her shoulder. “It was Gary's actually, I purloined it from his flat, but he won't mind. Well, he will, but he'll get over it.”

“Right.” He paused again, feeling a little uncomfortable. “I don't have a bottle opener or -”

“Oh, I do,” she said quickly, interrupting him as she pulled an opener from her satchel. “I don't have glasses, but we can just drink from the bottle.” She waited for him to reply. “I know this is totally intrusive, and I can leave if you want, and I swear I'm not some kind of crazy stalker fan, I just.. You're cool. You're one of my favorite authors, and you're right here in town, in a haunted house, and I'd be crazy not to want to come and hang out. If I didn't at least try, I'd probably literally regret it for the rest of my life.” She waited for him to answer. “But I can totally leave if you're uncomfortable.”

“Not at all,” he replied, taking a deep breath. “You... How old are you, if you don't mind me asking?”

“Twenty-one.”

“You seem younger.”

“Thanks.”

“Oh, I didn't -”

“So you don't think this place is haunted, huh?” she continued with a smile, slipping past him and heading into the front room. Despite all her talk of being willing to leave, she seemed confident enough to take charge of the situation. “What happened? Did someone die here or something?”

His first instinct was to not tell her any more than she already knew, but at the same time he felt moved to open up a little. “My grandmother.”

“When?”

“A long time ago. Back in the days when I still lived here.”

She wedged the wine bottle under her legs and began to twist the screw into the cork. “So it might be your grandmother's spirit that's knocking about the place, huh? And from what you said earlier, I get the feeling that you're trying to prove something by staying here tonight.”

“I guess so.”

“Like a personal victory, like you not only need to test to see if her ghost is here, but you also need to prove to yourself that you've got the balls.” With the bottle held firmly between her thighs, she was struggling to get the cork out.

“You're very perceptive.”

“So do you need to be alone for that,” she gasped, still struggling, “or is company okay?”

He knew he should really be alone, but as Hannah pulled the cork out and almost dropped the bottle, he couldn't bring himself to ask her to leave. “I don't mind company.”

“I spilled a little,” she pointed out, looking down at a few splashes of wine on the carpet.

“I don't care.”

She pulled the bottle from between her legs and took a glug, before passing it to him. “So how did she die? And where?”

“Aneurysm, I think,” he replied, taking a sip. “And she died in one of the bedrooms upstairs.”

“What kind of aneurysm?”

“I... I don't remember.”

“And you found her?”

He nodded.

“That must have been creepy as hell.”

“It had its moments.”

She took the wine bottle back and took another, longer sip, swallowing several times before handing it back to him. “Almost enough to make a guy go a little weird,” she said with a knowing smile, as a dribble of wine ran down her chin and onto her neck.

“Almost,” he admitted.

“And to make a guy who's already weird, go even weirder.”

He smiled.

“Huh,” she continued, “well, we'll get to that in a minute. Whether you're aware of it or not, you most likely have a great deal of troubled psychic energy stored up in your soul. Troubled energy isn't necessarily bad, because it can be turned into a positive force, but you have to understand its shape and form before you can start to manipulate it, otherwise it sits in your mind and rots, and then the rot spreads. That's what rot does.” She turned to look around the room, before glancing back at him. “I have experience with it comes to contacting the dead, you know.”

He frowned. “You do?”

“I've been on several overnight trips to haunted houses,” she continued, “and I've both assisted with and led attempts to establish communications with restless spirits. I have a training certificate from Marc X. Martell, have you heard of him?”

He shook his head.

“Well, I have a training certificate from his online school, which mean I know what I'm doing when it comes to this type of thing. I don't have my equipment with me, obviously, but I personally believe myself to be very well attuned to the energy of the supernatural world. If there's a ghost here, I think I'll be able to sense it.”

“Is that right?”

“If you want it to be sensed, that is.”

“I...” Pausing, he realized that the night was rapidly running away from him, and that his plan to spend a calm, quiet few hours in bed was starting to become something much more dramatic and theatrical. Still, an amateur séance seemed like as good a way as any to finish off his last night in the house and to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that there was no ghost. “Do your best,” he said finally, with a smile. “I've never actually been involved with anything like that before.”

“Seriously? Never?”

He shook his head.

“Well, then tonight's your lucky night,” she continued, heading past him again and making her way into the kitchen. “You're so fortunate that I'm here. Oh my God, is that a hatch on the floor?”

“It leads to the basement.”

“Can we go and look?”

“Later. Maybe I should show you the room where she died first.”

“Totally,” she continued, hurrying to the stairs and immediately starting to head up to the landing. “Don't worry, I won't tell anyone about anything that happens here tonight. It'll just be between the two of us, I won't even blog about it.”

“That's good,” he replied, taking another swig of wine before following her up. “I think I'd rather keep it that way.”

Chapter Twelve

Today

“Mind if I crash here tonight?” Alison asked, yawning as she crushed a beer can in her fist and then set it on the table with all the others. “I'm too tired to walk home. My back's killing me. Sorry to play the cripple card for sympathy, but it's true.”

“Sure,” John replied, having anticipated the question for a while – and having hoped that it would come. They'd spent the evening watching DVDs, but it was almost 4am now and they were both starting to flag. Still, it had been good to hang out with Alison again after months without seeing her, and he was starting to realize that he could be sociable after all, so long as he felt comfortable. Grabbing the remote, he switched the TV off.

“I've got to go all the way back up to Peterborough tomorrow,” she muttered, wincing slightly as she hauled herself out of the armchair. “Damn it, I feel like an old woman sometimes. I swear to God, I'm starting to get one of those weak bone diseases, whatever they're called.” Stretching her arms, she turned to him and smiled. “My boyfriend back at uni thinks I'm going to become a premature old woman. Like I'll be gray-haired and knitting by the time I'm thirty. The sad part is, I could totally see that happening.”

“I'm sure you'll be fine,” he replied, getting to his feet. “You can take my bed and I'll sleep on the sofa.”

“I'll take your grandmother's room,” she told him, turning and heading to the door before stopping and glancing back at him. “Oh. If that's okay, I mean. I don't want to step on any toes or do anything weird.”

He stared at her for a moment, before realizing that there was no reason to argue with her. “It's fine,” he said with a faint, not-entirely-successful smile. “I should find you some clean sheets, though.”

“Haven't you changed them since she died?” she asked with a laugh, before raising both eyebrows in shock. “You
haven't
? That's gross, John!”

“I didn't get around to it.”

“We've got to knock those weird kinks out of you,” she continued, heading to the hallway and then upstairs. “No offense, but you can change your grandmother's old sheets yourself. Unless you want to sleep in there and I'll take
your
bed?” She paused. “Actually, that probably wouldn't be much better.”

***

Alison, it turned out, snored like a foghorn. On his back in bed and wide awake, John listened to the sound of her snores drifting along the landing from the other bedroom, and although he was a little frustrated at being kept up, he couldn't help but feel just a little impressed. After all, Alison had a fairly small build so it was somewhat surprising that she was capable of making a sound like an angry donkey.

Besides, any sound was better than silence. Silence always made him worry about what might come next.

Unable to sleep, he began to run through the day's events in his mind, trying to work out – as usual, when it came to Alison – whether she'd been giving him any signals he might have missed. He wasn't in love with her, he knew that, but he couldn't deny that she was attractive, and he was starting to think that he needed to sleep with a girl, any girl, just to get his first time over with. Alison was a friend and would clearly never be anything more, but friends could still help each other out. He just didn't know how to bring the possibility up without risking what they had.

Suddenly, he realized that the snoring had stopped. He allowed himself a faint smile, rolled onto his side and closed his eyes, figuring that he should probably try to get to sleep during what might be a brief window. Even though the house was silent now, he was glad to know that someone else was nearby, and he couldn't help but feel grateful that she'd shown up to visit. Ever since she'd gone away to university, they'd spoken a few times by email but it hadn't really been like the old days. Now, at least, she was showing that she hadn't forgotten him. Drifting into dreams, he allowed himself to start thinking about other things.

“Hey,” he heard Alison whisper suddenly, from behind him, “do you mind if I get in?”

He opened his eyes, staring into darkness as he felt the bed creak and dip slightly. She was crawling under the duvet, and a moment later he felt her bare leg against his. He froze, terrified and hopeful at the same time, and then he felt her hand reach around and rest on his waist, while she pressed her body gently against his back. He couldn't tell whether she was naked, but he told himself that there was no way she'd get into bed with him if she didn't want something to happen. Still frozen with fear, he ran through all his possible options before reminding himself that Alison was no idiot: she had to understand that he'd start to get ideas, so he felt certain now that she was at least giving him the opportunity to make a move. All he had to do was roll to face her and do... something.

Anything.

He opened his mouth, but no words came out. Slowly he rolled onto his back, before lifting the duvet and looking down to see her arm resting on his bare waist. The sight was strangely comforting, and he couldn't help thinking that it would be nice to sleep with someone on a regular basis. After a moment, however, he realized that something seemed wrong, and as his eyes adjusted a little to the darkness he saw that her hand was wrinkled and old, with prominent, swollen veins running through the skin. A shiver passed through his chest as he realized that he recognized the hand, but he told himself he was wrong, that his mind was playing tricks on him and that all he had to do was look at her face and he'd see that everything was okay. Either that, or he was dreaming.

“Alison?” he whispered, his voice tense with fear.

He waited.

Silence.

Slowly, he turned to look at her. The room was too dark for him to see properly, and at first all he could make out was the general shape of her head on the next pillow, just ten inches or so from his face. He opened his mouth to say her name again, but gradually he began to make out her features, and as his eyes adjusted more he was able to just about discern two wide-open eyes staring straight at him, becoming more visible with each passing second.

His grandmother.

“No!” he shouted, pulling back and tumbling off the side of the bed, landing hard on the carpet but immediately rolling away until he slammed into the radiator. He heard footsteps in the darkness, and a moment later the light flickered on to reveal Alison standing in the doorway, startled and staring at him with shock in her eyes.

“What's wrong?” she asked, looking around the room. “John?”

He turned to the bed, but there was no sign of anyone. Where his grandmother had been just a moment ago, now the duvet was undisturbed.

“You scared the hell out of me.” Hurrying over to him, Alison dropped down onto her knees and took hold of him by the shoulders. “You were calling out. What happened?”

“Did you...” He stared at the bed for a moment longer, before turning to her. He could tell she had no idea what had happened, which meant he must have dreamed the whole thing. “Nothing,” he told her, getting to his feet and starting to feel like a complete fool. Try as he might to tell himself that there had been nothing with him a moment ago, however, he could still feel the touch of his grandmother's arm around his waist. “It was nothing,” he added finally, turning to Alison and trying his best to seem calm. “Really. Nothing happened.”

“And you still want to tell me that you're dealing with this okay?”

“I am!”

“Apart from waking up screaming?”

“It was just one time.”

“And what's wrong with your back?” she asked, stepping past him and grabbing his shoulder so she could get a better look. “Jesus Christ, John, where did all these burn marks come from?”

“It doesn't matter.”

“Some of them...” She paused. “John, some of these look really new, like they just happened a few minutes ago.”

He pulled away. “You don't know what you're talking about.”

She stared at him for a moment, clearly not convinced, and this time there was a hint of pity in her eyes. “John...”

“Maybe you should go.”

“What?”

“It's almost six,” he continued, “so there's not much point sleeping anymore. You said you have to go back to Peterborough today, so...” He paused, feeling a shiver pass through his body as he realized that he just wanted her to leave. “I'm fine,” he added, spotting a cigarette on the nightstand. “Everyone has nightmares, and that's all it was. You don't need to worry about me. Nothing bad is going to happen.”