At the centre of this deserted street, equidistant to each house, a tiny crack opened in the tarmac, no wider than a hair.
From this slight imperfection, blue smoked leaked out, carried by the winds that rattled Penny Crescent.
A Tibetan terrier watched on through a window, ears pricked and head cocked.
PART 2
Eggs and Bacon
1.
Eleanor woke from her fitful sleep early. The curtains were still left open, and bright sunlight shone in through the window, falling on the bed sheets tangled around her body. Sleep had not returned easily after she’d returned to bed. She’d tossed and turned in the brief periods of slumber.
She opened her eyes and squinted against the harsh light.
The storm must have burned itself out, she thought. Looks like we might be in for a glorious day.
She always welcomed the hot weather, kinder on her arthritis than the cold.
With the fear of last night’s storm a fading memory, Eleanor unravelled the sheets from around her body and climbed out of bed. The carpet felt hot beneath her bare feet, warmed by the concentrated rays of light from the window. She tidied her bed, tucking the corners of the sheets back underneath the mattress and smoothing out the wrinkles. She pulled her nightshirt over her head, neatly folded it and placed the garment on the bed ready for tonight. On the wardrobe door hung the clothes picked out the night before: a dark green skirt and a white blouse. She quickly dressed and chose a simple necklace of wooden beads from her jewellery box.
That’ll do, she thought, checking in the mirror. I look decent enough if Joseph wants to take me out anywhere.
She opened her bedroom door, and the sudden smell nearly made her sick, rocked by memories.
The house stank of fried eggs and bacon.
It used to make her mouth water. She’d be lying in bed, having a leisurely doze, and Arthur would be downstairs cooking breakfast. The arrival of the delicious smell saved Arthur from calling her. She’d be downstairs straight away, just as he dished up.
The shock of registering this familiar scent hit her hard. She gripped the handle of the door tight as she leaned forwards, steadying herself. She took deep breaths to try and fight the wave of nausea.
As the threat of vomiting subsided, she started to adjust to the smell.
Joseph must have decided to get up early and cook me breakfast, she realised. How was he to know that it would affect me so badly? Even I wouldn’t have thought that the smell of eggs and bacon would have such an affect.
Composed once more, she walked down the landing and reached the top of the stairs. Bacon sizzled, eggs bubbled and fat hissed from the kitchen.
To eat the breakfast might be too much. It had been years since she’d eaten a cooked breakfast; back when Arthur was still alive. The smell alone had brought a melancholy slide show of their mornings together.
Down the stairs and into the hall, the air hung thick with the smell of cooking. She considering heading into the living room and lighting a few sticks of incense to fight the sickly odour, otherwise her house might smell like a greasy spoon café all week.
No, better to say good morning to Joseph first. With a bit of luck, he’ll have a pot of tea ready and waiting.
She walked into the kitchen.
The room stood empty. The cooker top appeared bare and clean and turned off at both the hob and the wall socket. All the plates lay in the rack. The kitchen table held a vase of fresh flowers that she had placed there yesterday.
But still, the smell of eggs and bacon lingered heavy in the air.
Eleanor remained frozen in the doorway, staring around the kitchen. Nothing had been prepared.
Then why can I smell it?
Footsteps bounded down the stairs, and Joe walked through the hall. He wore a plain black T-shirt and grey boxer shorts, his hair messy from sleep.
“Smells good, Grandma,” he said, bending to kiss the top of her head. “What’re we having? If I’d have known I would have gotten up sooner.”
Eleanor stood open mouthed, gazing at her grandson.
“Not gone cold, I hope!” Joe continued, striding past Eleanor and into the kitchen. He headed towards the dining table, but stopped. He looked at the cooker, then back to his grandmother. “Funny, I could have sworn-”
“That you smelled something cooking?” Eleanor finished.
“Yeah.” He smiled, scratching the back of his head. “It was the smell that woke me up. I thought I’d better get down here if you were treating me to a cooked breakfast. I can still smell it, eggs and sausages.”
“No. It’s eggs and bacon.”
“What difference does it make?” asked Joe, walking over to the work surface and flicking on the kettle. “Eggs and sausages, eggs and bacon, nothing’s been cooked anyway.”
“It matters to me.”
Eleanor marched over to the cooker and poked its cold, white top with a bony finger.
“Your grandfather used to cook eggs and bacon right here regularly. I know what eggs and bacon smell like!”
Joe bent down and grabbed two mugs from a low cupboard. “I know how often he made breakfast. We used to wake up to it at least once a week, didn’t we?”
Eleanor craned her head over the cooker.
“Joseph, come here.”
Joe obediently rested the cups by the kettle and joined her.
“Put your face close to the hob.”
“What?”
“Quickly!”
He hesitated, giving his grandmother a wary glance.
“It’s not hot! Look,” she said, resting a palm flat on the black circle that was the front-right hob.
“Okay, okay.”
Still watching his grandmother, Joe slowly lowered his head until his cheek stopped inches away from the cooker top.
“Well?” she said. “Notice anything?”
“This is weird. The smell…”
“What about it?”
“It’s stronger down there. Very strong in fact. If I didn’t know better, I’d say eggs and bacon must be cooking on there right now to give off such a smell.”
Eleanor moved to the dining table and gently lowered herself into a wooden chair. Joe still investigated the cooker top, sniffing around every square inch.
“This is uncanny!”
“Joseph,” said Eleanor, her voice starting to shake. “Make me a hot, strong tea will you? There’s a good blend of leaves in a jar in the top cupboard.”
Joe straightened from the cooker.
“Grandma? Are you okay?”
“Don’t worry yourself fussing over me. I’ll be fine in a minute.”
Joe quickly made two cups of tea, regularly turning to check on Eleanor. She stared at the cooker, deep in thought.
Joe sat down, placing the steaming mugs on the table.
“What’s the matter, Grandma? You look like the devil himself is sat on top of that cooker.”
She lifted her gaze away briefly to grab her mug by the handle and slide it closer.
“The smell, Joe. Oh, that smell! When I opened my door this morning, a wave of memories rode in. And then when I found the kitchen empty…”
“You got spooked, yeah?”
“Yes, I suppose I did. What do you think is causing it? I haven’t made breakfast on that thing since your grandfather died.”
“I really don’t know,” said Joe, wrapping his fingers around his mug to test the heat. “Maybe one of the neighbours is cooking?”
“The window is closed,” Eleanor pointed out, “and the other houses are too far away. You smelled it yourself, it is coming from the cooker.”
Joe shrugged his shoulders.
“There is another possibility,” said Eleanor, “but you need to think outside the box, as it were.”
Joe swallowed. “You mean something like…”
2.
GHOSTS
“Here we are,” said Eleanor, flicking from the contents to the appropriate page. The h
ard part had been pulling down the large volume, The Encyclopaedia of the Unexplained, from such a high shelf. The pages were worn at the edges from the countless times Eleanor had glanced through it. She ignored all the chapters on aliens, sea monsters and telekinesis. There was something relevant in the ghost section she remembered reading.
She heard Joe in his bedroom. They had both returned upstairs together in a bid to escape the greasy smell.
She turned the pages, each one containing columns of text and grainy, black and white pictures of supposed ghost sightings. One showed the blurry figure of a woman stood at the bottom of a flight of stairs and another was a disturbing picture of a man apparently twisted inside the trunk of an old tree. She began to read.
There are three types of manifestation that suggest a supernatural presence.
1. Apparitions.
These are things that can be seen. Figures, both solid and slightly transparent, are common in the history of ghosts. There have been instances where a person has had a conversation with a recently deceased loved one without knowing of the death.
Smoke, or vapours of varying colours, usually reveal themselves on photographs, most commonly around small children (For more findings on children’s sensitivity to the supernatural, see page 333).
The most recorded phenomenon is that of glowing orbs. Small (although some reports have suggested that they can measure many feet across) balls of light, normally invisible to the naked eye and can only be seen on film, drifting around rooms of notoriously haunted places.
A picture beside the paragraph showed a young boy, maybe only three or four years old, sat on a wooden floor looking up into a cloud of blue smoke that filled the entire right hand side of the photograph.
“I know that it’s here somewhere…” Eleanor muttered.
2. Noises or ‘things that go bump in the night’.
Known as poltergeists or ‘noisy spirits’, this manifestation is the most aggressive of paranormal encounters, having been known to throw physical objects and people, and even start fires. A poltergeist has an affinity for young girls, especially those reaching adolescence.
Eleanor licked her dry lips as her eyes passed over the title of the next paragraph:
3. Phantom smells.
The sudden arrival of a mysterious odour, with no apparent source, is also a sign of a supernatural presence. A famous case in Cornwall involved the regular stench of fish that would drift in at the same time every day in the hall of a newly built house. Research suggested that the spirit of a murdered fisherman passed through the household every day, following the old route home he took from the dock when alive.
The one paragraph of the four hundred page book that dealt with ghostly smells.
To Eleanor, the book suggested ghosts go about their daily living routine over and over again. So maybe the smell of eggs and bacon…
“Joseph,” she shouted, hands shaking so much she could barely keep hold of the book.
He ran down the landing and into the study.
“Grandma? What’s happened?”
Eleanor held the book up to him.
“Read the part on ghostly smells.”
Joe gazed at his grandmother for a moment, mouth hanging open and eyes wide.
“Phew,” he said, sighing and rolling his eyes to the ceiling. “The way you shouted, I thought something had happened…”
“Just read it, Joseph!”
He scanned over the paragraph and handed the book back.
“I can’t believe you’re taking this seriously. I mean, coming up here just to seek out that nugget of information? You could have hurt yourself. That’s a heavy book.”
“I think it’s your grandfather.”
“What?”
Eleanor remained sat in her armchair, looking down at the book open in her lap.
“It says in this book that the occurrence of a mysterious smell can be a sign of a haunting. The eggs and bacon is too much of a coincidence. It has to be Arthur. He’s trying to make contact from the other side.”
“Grandma, listen to me,” Joe said, kneeling down in front of the chair. “These books. I admire your hunger for knowledge, but you can’t take these things as fact.” He patted the pages of the open book. “These are written by no talent writers who are trying to make a quick buck by letting their imaginations run wild.”
“But it was a real case. The house in Cornwall! The fishy smell…”
“It was probably a blocked drain. Come on…” He pulled the book from her lap and dumped it on a nearby shelf already piled high with volumes. “Enough of this nonsense. There are no such things as ghosts-”
“Ssssh!” Eleanor snapped, putting a finger over her mouth.
“What are you-”
She grabbed his arm in her thin grip and squeezed it. He fell silent.
From the kitchen beneath them came the unmistakable sound of footsteps on the floor tiles.
“I’ll kill them,” Joe whispered.
Eleanor frowned at him.
“It’s those bloody Dean twins again!”
“Joseph, stay up here.”
“No way. This is long overdue.”
He stood and marched out of the study.
“Joseph,” Eleanor called after him. “Wait!”
3.
Joe silently walked down the stairs, his back pressed against the wall. Shuffling footsteps continued across the kitchen floor.
He inched closer to the bottom of the stairs, already looking around the hall.
“Joseph!”
Eleanor, behind him the whole way, placed a hand on his back.
“Joseph,” she whispered again. “Come back up here.”
Joe shook his head and impatiently waved her off. He descended all the way down and into the hall. Eleanor stayed close.
More noises echoed from the kitchen: bumps and bangs, but tentative, almost hushed.
“Can’t believe they have the nerve to break in here again,” he hissed. “They’ve got this coming.”
“Please,” Eleanor pleaded. “Let’s go back upstairs.”
Joe burst into a run down the hall and exploded into the kitchen. His socks skidded on the tiles as he tried to stop himself.
“Joseph!”
Eleanor dashed after him and entered the kitchen.
The kitchen was empty.
Joe scratched the back of his neck and looked around. He crossed the room to the back door and examined the lock.
“What happened?” Eleanor asked.
“I didn’t see anything.”
“But we heard-”
“I know, but I haven’t seen anyone.”
“My lord, look at that…” Eleanor gasped.
“What?”
She pointed up at the window. The highest pane, which ran the entire upper length of the window, had been propped wide open.
“That’s how they got out,” said Joe and squeezed his hands into fists.
“Don’t be silly, Joseph. Look at how narrow it is. I doubt even I could squeeze through that.”
“Then what about it?”
“It was closed when I went upstairs, closed and locked. And smell…”
They both sniffed.
“The eggs and bacon have gone,” she said.
Joe moved away from his grandmother and sat at the dining table, head in hands.
“I’m not buying this hocus-pocus, Grandma. There has got to be a rational explanation for all this.”
Eleanor approached the window and looked up at the open pane, deep in thought.
“Arthur always opened that window when I complained about the smell clogging up the house…”
Joe peered up from the table.
“You still think that this is Granddad trying to make contact? Come on. You have to wake up. The smell has gone because of the open window, that’s easily explained.”
“Then what about the window?”
“Couldn’t you have forgotten that you opened it?”
&n
bsp; “Oh, so now you think that I’m senile as well as a crazy mystic?”
Joe shook his head.
“No, Grandma. I-”
“Look, I know that window was closed when I left this room. You yourself came downstairs because you thought there was someone in here. This is not easily explainable, and you know it.”
Frank Harper Takes a Shower
1.
Anne hadn’t slept at all through the night, even after the storm had decided it had beaten Penny Crescent enough and moved on. Following the booming thunder, howling winds and hammering rain, Anne had lain in the silence, waiting for the heavy footfalls of Frank to pound up the stairs.
His mood when he’d left was more turbulent, more frightening than the storm. The manner in which he drove off worried Anne. She had visions of him ploughing into another vehicle at speed; the car launching up in a big ball of fire, all twisted metal and burning flesh. She shook the picture from her head and reminded herself that Frank had returned safely on both of the previous occasions.
At least he didn’t come back when Eleanor’s grandson visited last night, she thought. Now there is a situation that would’ve needed some explaining.
She turned to the sink and placed the kids’ used breakfast bowls into hot, soapy water. She nearly dropped them as Bronwyn called out from the living room.
“Dad’s back!”
She grabbed a tea towel and quickly dried her shaking hands. She dragged her fingers through her messy hair, trying to look halfway decent.
Through the noise of the television and Betsy’s excited barking, she heard the key in the front door.
“Dad!” cried Bronwyn.
“Morning, sweetie,” came Frank’s low voice.
Anne swallowed.
“Where have you been?”
“I went to see Uncle Bill. Why? You miss me?”
“There was a storm!”
“Yeah,” said Charlie, “and she woke us all up!”
Frank laughed. “Didn’t you like the thunder, hon?”
The Collector Book One: Mana Leak Page 8
