by Guy Adams
'It's not. I mean, we only just left...'
They were stood outside Jackson Leaves. They hadn't moved an inch.
'But that's ridiculous...' muttered Rob. 'We walked all the way up...' He looked ahead of them, and they started to walk again, the hedge moving past them, the parked cars.
'It's fine,' he said. 'I don't know what happened, but look, the van's just there.' He pointed at it with the keys. Only a few houses away. They kept walking... and walking... and walking...
Julia gripped Rob's arm even tighter as she turned to look up at Jackson Leaves, the tatty gables, the loose guttering that dripped in this constant damn rain...
'It won't let us go!' she cried.
'It's just a house,' Rob said, pulling her – gentler this time – along the pavement. 'It's just bricks and rot and damp...'
They began to run. Rob kept his eyes fixed on the van, pointing the keys at it like a talisman as they ran faster and faster towards it. The rain made it hard, stinging in his eyes and making his feet slip on the pavement, but he focused hard and pushed forward... They'd make it...
His feet lost their grip in the wet and he fell, pulling Julia down with him. They landed on the pavement with a grunt, Rob jarring his elbow on the tarmac and Julia scraping her side.
'Stupid...' he rubbed at his elbow. 'Sorry, love, clumsy idiot.'
Julia wasn't listening. She was looking up at Jackson Leaves.
It was staring right back.
'I don't get it,' he said. 'This is stupid. We were moving, you could tell we were...' He looked along the road towards the van. 'Everything was moving but we weren't getting any closer to the things further away. Which doesn't make sense.'
'None of it does, and none of it will,' Julia said quietly. 'It just is. We should go back inside.'
'No way,' Rob said, getting to his feet. 'I'm not setting one foot back in that house, we're getting out of here if it ki—'
'Don't say that,' Julia interrupted. 'Don't encourage it.'
Rob put his hands on her cheeks, rubbing the rain from her eyes with his thumbs. 'Come on, babe,' he said. 'Keep it together, and we'll get out of here, OK?'
She got to her feet but made no sign of agreeing with him.
'We'll try the other way,' he said. 'Walk down to the high street.'
He turned her away from the house, doing his best not to look at it himself, and they began to walk along the pavement in the other direction.
'It'll be fine,' he said. 'You'll see. In a minute, all of this is just going to stop and we'll be back to normal. We'll probably even laugh about it, that stupid night when we got ourselves all turned around until we didn't know what was happening... Shared hysteria, that's what it is... Derren Brown stuff.' He scuffed at the puddles beneath their feet, sending a spray of rainwater into the darkness ahead of them as if to test whether it was safe. 'We won't be able to figure out how we got so wound up, just you watch, it'll be that night that we lost it,' he laughed. 'That night we went so bloody mad we ended up walking around in the rain while some American nutjob tried to burgle us. That's it, you know,' he continued, moving a little faster. 'That whole thing in there was just some kind of trick so that they could get in the place and turn it over. Not that they'll find anything worth having, not in that stupid... bastard... house!' This last was screamed at Jackson Leaves, still stood, uncaring, to the side of them.
'I don't know,' he said, dropping down to sit on the kerb. 'I just don't know.'
After a moment she sat down next to him. 'We'll have to go back inside,' she said.
He shook his head. 'I'm not going back in there.'
'It's no better out here.' She had become gentle, only too aware of how close Rob was to breaking. He wasn't violent any more, he was too scared even for that. You couldn't fight Jackson Leaves.
'I just can't bear the idea of going back in there, baby,' he said, starting to cry. 'That noise, the blood and water... I just can't...'
'We have to,' she replied. 'Look at it out here, it's just as wrong. Look at the rain.' She held out her hand and swiped it gently from right to left in front of his eyes, and for the first time he noticed that the rain wasn't moving. Droplets were stationary in the air. He suddenly realised the rain was silent around them. Looking back over his shoulder towards the house, the rain there was splashing down on the plants, the roof tiles, that stupid American's car. But here? Stillness...
'How is that even possible?' he asked, sticking out his hand and touching the droplets with his fingers, watching as the glistening balls, fat with the stolen light from street lamps, popped against his touch.
'I'm sure there's a proper scientific explanation,' said Julia with a half-smile. She looked up at Jackson Leaves, noticing movement at the upstairs windows. Right on the top floor, the wide shoulders of the American filled one of the window frames as he stared out into the night, though whether it was the night she stood in she couldn't say. Something told her not; that there was more of a gap between them than simply the hedge and driveway. Directly beneath him, one floor down, a blob of red paisley alerted her to the fat man's presence. Unlike the American, she knew that he was watching her and Rob, and whatever version of the world this was that had trapped them was one that the fat man knew well. He could move along these pavements and roads, of that she had no doubt.
'It's...' Rob was staring along the road into the distance. 'I don't know, something's happening.'
Julia followed his gaze and tried to figure out what he was seeing. There was certainly something wrong, but it was hard to put your finger on. 'We need to move,' she said, as it became clear. 'We need to move now, Rob, while we still can.'
He stared along the street, watching as one by one the cars and houses in the distance disappeared. A great wave of darkness was sweeping towards them, swallowing each droplet of rain, each inch of pavement and road. Who knew what would happen if they were still sat there when it arrived? Julia was right, there wasn't good enough cause to find out.
He got to his feet and they moved towards Jackson Leaves, the sound of the rain in front of them building with every step. He took one look over his shoulder just before crossing the threshold, the darkness was nearly on them, it had taken the houses, the trees, it had even taken his van.
'Come on, then,' he said, and they walked into the moving curtain of rain that would lead them back home.
FOURTEEN
Gwen was getting all motherly, tugging the blanket tighter around Ianto as he shivered. 'What did you see?' she asked him.
'Not much to be honest,' he admitted, staring at the fire Jack had just lit and willing it to get going. If it didn't get a good blaze on within five minutes, he'd start shoving furniture in the grate, he was so cold. 'I've been a bit out of it. I heard the pounding on the walls though, and the TV turned on by itself.'
'Power surge...' said Jack in a casual manner that didn't convince Ianto for one moment.
It didn't convince Gwen either. 'And the walls?'
'That'll be the ghosts,' was Jack's dismissive reply. 'I'm going to take a look around,' he said with a grin, changing the subject before either could ask any more questions. In case they tried anyway, he strolled out of the room.
'That's our Jack,' Ianto muttered. 'Quick with the knob gags and melodrama but light on cold, hard facts.'
'You know what he's like,' Gwen said, putting some more dry wood on the fire.
'Don't I just.'
'There's certainly a lot more to this place than meets the eye,' Gwen said, pulling her PDA out of her jacket pocket, opening up some of the files on the house that she had ported across and handing it to Ianto. 'The history of the building is a tabloid's dream: suicides, murders... and you'll never believe who the first person to own it was.'
'Jack.'
Gwen swore under her breath. 'Fine, make me look an idiot. Everyone knew but me.'
'Sorry. But there's not much about him that I don't know.' Ianto stood up and moved over to the rug directly in front of
the fire. 'Actually, that's not true,' he continued, sitting on the rug and holding his hands out towards the flames. 'I doubt I know a fraction of what's worth knowing, but what little of his life is on file I've found it, read it...' he looked up at her and gave an embarrassed smile, 'learnt it. I'm like a stupid teenager swotting up with a copy of Smash Hits.'
Gwen rested a hand on his shoulder. 'You do know that he's...'
'Just a shag?' Ianto nodded. 'Yes I know. I can't help it though, I've never been much good at casual.' He looked up at her. 'Don't tell him. I don't want to look stupid.'
She squatted down and gave him a peck on the cheek. 'I won't, you're not stupid either, just...'
'Deluded?'
She smiled. 'Yeah, that sounds about right.'
'You wouldn't believe how many places he's lived,' Ianto said. 'That's why I didn't mention it. I assumed it was just a coincidence. He's had places all over Cardiff. Lots of them under false names of course, Robert Gossage, Alan Jones, John Smith... But I've followed the chain of sales. He keeps buying places then selling them on.'
'So he watches Property Ladder.'
'It's not that. You know what he's like, he's not interested in money. He's obsessed with trying to find a home, that's what I think.'
'Maybe.' Gwen looked sadly at Ianto. He really had fallen for Jack, hadn't he? 'He did right to sell this place on though,' she said. 'Look at the news reports.'
Ianto got the hint, nodding and reading the small screen in front of him. 'So the question is: did this place turn its residents mad, or are we stood in a psycho magnet?'
'Now there's a lovely thought,' Gwen admitted. 'Perhaps it's just as well the owners did a bunk.'
'They weren't so bad,' Ianto said. 'Just scared. Can't say I blame them either. Still, they tried to look after me, even with everything else going on.' He smiled, the warmth finally creeping back into him. 'That makes them a decent couple in my book. I may send them a Christmas card.'
'"Season's Greetings from the nutter in your airing cupboard"?'
'That sort of thing.'
'Do you remember anything?' Gwen asked. 'Between disappearing on the high street and reappearing here?'
Ianto's face lost some of its humour. 'It was strange... Like a hypnic jerk.'
'A what?'
'That feeling you get when you're just about to fall asleep and your body jolts as if you've fallen or tripped.'
'Oh...' Gwen rolled her eyes. 'That. You're the first person I've met that wouldn't just call it "that jerky sleep thing".'
'I read books,' Ianto joked. 'Get over it. Anyway, it was like that, a jolt through my body, this feeling of being somewhere else... Nothing specific, just a sense of having moved.' An uncomfortable look passed across his face. 'It scrambled my head. I didn't really know what was happening... It felt like there was something else there.'
'Something or someone?'
'Someone.' He shrugged. 'Like I say, though, it shook me up. Who knows what was going on, eh? Next thing I know, I'm waking up on the floor over there with the whole house going mental.'
'Due to a "power surge".'
Ianto chuckled. 'Could have been worse. He could have said subsidence.'
Gwen nodded. 'When Jack starts talking like a cover story, you know you're in trouble.'
They heard the front door open and exchanged surprised looks. They heard Jack's voice from the stairs. 'Changed your mind?' Neither Gwen nor Ianto could hear the reply, but they recognised Rob's voice.
'I didn't think we'd be seeing them again,' said Gwen, heading out into the hallway.
Ianto listened as Rob and Julia talked about the outside world having 'gone'. The front door opened again as Jack stepped outside. Ianto considered going out after him but decided against it. The fire was just starting to warm him, and a night of impossibilities was beginning to make him jaded. The outside world has vanished? Yes, of course it has, bound to happen...
After a few moments, Jack walked back into the lounge followed by Gwen.
'You feeling any better?' he asked Ianto.
'I'm feeling... Frankly, that's an improvement.'
'Good.'
Rob and Julia walked in. Cowed by whatever they had seen outside, there was little argument left in either of them.
'OK,' said Jack. 'For now we're stuck in this place, so let's make the most of it – drag the equipment in, get set up and start trying to find out what's going on.' He turned to Rob and Julia. 'I know this is freaking you both out, but I'm going to need you to keep it together and help me out here, OK?'
'Do we have a choice?' asked Julia.
'Yes,' Jack replied. 'I could drug you and throw you in the boot of the car.'
'Jack,' Gwen hissed.
'What?' Jack replied with a laugh. 'It's a choice!' His smile vanished as he stared at Rob and Julia. 'Believe me, I'll do it for your safety and ours if it looks like the best option.'
'We should always let him deal with the civilians,' Ianto said. 'He's just so good at it.' He got up and started stamping the circulation back into his feet. 'I know it might not seem like it,' he said to Rob and Julia, 'but right now we're the best chance you've got of seeing it through the night.'
'That supposed to make me feel better?' asked Rob.
'If you knew how many times we've probably saved your life already over the years it would,' Jack chipped in. 'This is what we do. Now let us get on and do it.'
Rob held up his hands in surrender. 'Fine...'
'OK,' said Jack. 'We need space and security.'
He walked out of the lounge and headed to the next door along the hall.
'If I remember right, the study has a... aha!' He pointed to the lock in the old door. 'Got the key for this?'
'In the kitchen,' Julia said, walking past him to get it. 'But it's a dining room not a study.'
'Oh, nobody has studies any more,' Jack said sadly, walking in and pulling the cheap pine table over to the far wall. Rob grabbed the chairs, as always happier to be distracted by doing something. An old-fashioned sideboard filled with Julia's aunt's dinner service and some ugly brown glass trifle bowls was left where it was.
Julia came in and handed Jack the key.
'What good's that going to do?' asked Rob.
'You're the one who was hiding in the lounge earlier swinging pokers at people,' Jack retorted, dropping the key into his pocket. 'The night is yet young, who knows how it'll end up?'
He turned to look out of the French windows that filled the far wall. 'This is new.'
'How do you know?' Julia asked, a little ashamed that she couldn't say whether he was right or not.
'I used to live here,' he said. 'Long time ago.'
'It must have been,' Julia replied. 'Auntie Joan was here for... I don't know, thirty years.'
Jack smiled. 'I'm older than I look.'
'He works out,' Ianto said from the doorway. 'What are we bringing in?'
'You stay by the fire for now,' Jack said. 'We can manage.'
'I'd rather get moving, get the circulation flowing.'
Jack grinned. 'I'd love to help but I'm kinda busy!'
'Story of my life.'
'There's a couple of big canvas bags. We'll need as many monitors as we can strip out, all the audio/visual stuff you can get your hands on, basically. We want this place wired for sound.'
'"Power from the needle to the plastic",' Ianto replied, straight-faced, and walked out.
Jack stared after him. 'Please tell me he didn't just quote Cliff Richard at me... He's so dumped if he did.'
***
Ianto's arms and legs were throbbing, bursts of pins and needles erupting all over as he stepped outside the front door. It was still raining. 'Oh God,' he sighed, 'here's me, about to get hypothermia.'
He ran to the SUV, opened the back door and climbed inside as quickly as possible. Sitting down in the back section, surrounded by the monitoring equipment, he shook some of the water from his hair and worked out what he could take apart without br
eaking anything. Realising he was missing a trick, he pulled his set of keys out of his pocket and reached forward to turn on the engine and heater. 'Ah...' he sighed as air began to pump out of the vents, 'I may just stay here all night.'
'If you do, so am I,' Gwen said, climbing in.
'Sorry,' Ianto grinned, 'but I've baggsied electrics.' He pulled a toolkit out of the glovebox. 'You carry the bags.'
'I hate you,' Gwen told him, grabbing one of the bags.
'May it keep you as warm as these heaters do me,' Ianto replied. 'Close the door, you're letting in a draft.'
Chuckling as Gwen ran back towards the house, he pulled one of the monitors forward and began to disconnect its cabling.
Gwen nearly slipped on the polished wood of the hall floor but managed to regain her balance by grabbing hold of the banister.
'Careful,' Jack said from the dining room doorway, 'we wouldn't want you falling over and damaging the equipment.'
'I am so going to smack someone this evening,' she said, shoving the bag at him.
Rob watched Jack unpack reams of cabling from the large bag before deciding to leave him to it. The man had made it perfectly clear that his and Julia's input was far from necessary. Arrogant bastard. Rob was beginning to wish he had never called him. The minute all of this strange stuff had started, he and Julia should have been out of the house and away. He bet they would have been fine if they hadn't hung around to help the American's prissy boyfriend.
He went into the kitchen, unsure of what to do with himself but determined to find something to occupy him. He thought about putting the kettle on but decided against it; they'd only ask him to make them a drink as well, and he was neither brave enough to refuse them nor gracious enough to do it. He didn't want to be their slave.
He started poking through the cupboards aimlessly, straightening tins and cartons, ordering things a little more. He opened drawers, altering the order of the cutlery (it went fork, knife, then spoon, obviously... that was, after all, the order in which you needed them at the dining table, and why were the forks and spoons not nestling inside one another? It saved on space and looked much neater). He refolded tea towels, matching corner to corner. He turned the glasses so that they rested on their brims (why would you do it any other way? Did you want them to fill with dust?). He caught his reflection in the window, tongue poking out of the corner of his mouth in utter concentration, and it drew him to a halt. What was he doing? He didn't care about this sort of thing normally. Why did it suddenly seem so vital now?
