The Dark Corners Box Set

by Robert Scott-Norton

  And they seemed alive.

  Adam had used his flame to light the additional candles on either side of the painting and the room’s brightness increased.

  “This is what you came for?” Lamont asked.

  “This painting and me go back a long way.”

  “But why do you care about it?”

  Adam turned his head to look at Lamont. “Why do you care about it? You’ve locked it up in your occult museum and taken the trouble to put it inside its own special cage. Does it trouble you? Do you dream about this painting?”

  Lamont had indeed dreamt about the painting but he wasn’t about to admit that. Even as a boy, he'd been visited in the night by these terrible shadowmen. Always three of them together. One leading the other two. They would stand at the end of his bed and when Lamont opened his eyes and discovered he was paralysed, the shadowmen would regard him like he was a zoo exhibit. They would bend in lower until their faces were inches from his own. Lamont would try to scream.

  “I never remember my dreams,” Lamont lied. “I prefer it that way.”

  “Everyone dreams of the shadowmen at some point in their lives.”

  Lamont didn’t respond. The man was goading him. He just needed him gone. Whatever it took to get him away from here so he could call for help. Vigilance would send someone if he asked and even if they didn’t, he had another plan.

  Adam moved as if to pick up the painting from its resting place but stopped with his fingers inches from the frame.

  “Pick it up,” he said to Lamont. “Then pass it to me.”

  “Why don’t you pick it up yourself?”

  “You’re a clever man with access to knowledge. Maybe I’ll come back when things are done. But with that knowledge I suspect you have your own ways to protect the artefacts in your possession.”

  “You believe I’ve put some kind of jinx on it?”

  “Have you?”

  “No,” Lamont lied. “Go ahead and pick it up.”

  Adam smiled, and the smile made Lamont want to turn and take his chances in the dark corners of the basement.

  Lamont straightened and stood defiantly in front of his tormentor. “I wouldn’t know how to jinx that painting. It’s too powerful for me to interfere with. That is why I placed it down here, that’s why I took it from its original home. The artist was quite mad.”

  “Yes. That’s as may be, but still, I want you to pick it up.” Adam came to Lamont’s side, and the knife appeared at his throat again.

  “OK. OK. I’ll do whatever you want. Just take it and go.”

  The knife dropped to Adam’s side; the point still directed at Lamont. And then Lamont strolled up to the painting and muttered words silently under his breath so Adam wouldn’t hear them. He stopped in front of the painting, hating the brush work that seemed to make these creatures glide across the canvas.

  Gingerly, he reached across and took the painting from the table. Instantly, heat shot through his hands and a pain struck the back of his head like those severe morning migraines he’d been getting recently. With the painting held tightly, ignoring the pain in his hands, he spun around and raised it above his head.

  Adam could have had the decency to look surprised.

  “Get out of here or I’ll smash this,” Lamont said, “Whatever you want it for, it will be useless in pieces.” Anger spilt into his tone, brushing the fear aside and giving him a moment of clarity. He could get out of this and get the painting somewhere safe. Adam couldn’t come for it if the whole Vigilance Society were involved in protecting it.

  “You will not smash it,” Adam replied, his voice exuding calmness.

  “Don’t be so sure.”

  “I am sure. You see, there are two people I’d like you to meet.”

  Lamont sensed movement from both sides and spun his head to see what had set his senses off. He almost dropped the painting in shock as he saw the shadowmen step away from the dark corners of the room. The impossible figures could have been lifted straight out of the painting they were so similar. They were the men from his dreams.

  “They’re real,” he mouthed.

  “And they will do as I bid them to do,” Adam said. “Take him!” he commanded and hands that felt solid and nebulous at the same moment, gripped his arms above the elbow and dug in with nails that burnt like irons left in the fire.

  The terror took over. Lamont wanted to drop the painting and cry out an apology to his tormentor but his lips froze and he stood shaking, feeling his bladder loosen amid the embarrassment of standing petrified in his own home in a living nightmare.

  “I should thank you for taking such great care of it. You don’t know how much of a service you’ve been.” Adam strolled over and relieved Lamont of his prize. If the jinx still had any effect at all, it was impossible to tell by looking at Adam’s reaction. His thin devilish smile turned up a notch as he stepped back admiring the painting in the light from the candles. “Magnificent isn’t it.” he said to no one in particular.

  Lamont thought maybe that would be the end of it. Adam had what he’d come for and could safely walk out with it. And the moment he was gone, Lamont could get on the phone and arrange a strike team to come after him and retrieve it. Maybe this would turn out to be a positive thing. What other artefacts might this terrible person lead them to?

  But Adam’s face turned into a snarl and from that moment, Lamont knew that he wasn’t getting out of here alive.

  “Dispose of him, he’s yours,” Adam said to the two shadowmen and withdrew from the vault.

  “Wait!” Lamont cried. “You don’t have to do this.”

  His words fell on deaf ears. The shadowmen’s dead claws dug into his flesh and began to tear him apart. Lamont could only pray that this would be quick and painless.

  It was neither.

  2

  There was a figure at the end of his bed and it was holding something in his fist.

  Seth Loomis had woken with a start and had first thought he was still asleep, dreaming of an intruder, but the intruder was very real and very agitated by something. The man’s features were hard to make out in the dark but Seth didn’t switch the light on just yet. If this was an apparition, they were sometimes sensitive to the light conditions. Something as simple as switching on a light bulb might be enough to send them away. He thought that would be a mistake based on the man’s agitation.

  The man was a reasonable build, bald, but with a grey goatee beard, neatly trimmed. He was wearing pyjamas and a dressing gown.

  It was a dead man, obviously, or rather the image of a dead man. Seth wouldn’t consider this a ghost, he doubted anyone else could see him. But for a man with Seth’s abilities, this wasn’t an infrequent occurrence.

  There was something familiar about him but he couldn’t for the life of him nail it down. He was too tired for this. After barely a week of recuperation after the events at Ravenmeols Hospital, he was still aching and covered in bruises. Taking on a group of occultists would do that to you.

  “What do you need?” Seth asked the vision softly, not wanting to wake up the others in the vicarage. Malc and Georgia wouldn’t take kindly to being woken up in the middle of the night—Georgia especially would do that passive aggressive fuming she did so well.

  The man didn’t reply although his mouth was opening and closing. That would be why he was so angry then. Knowing that he couldn’t get across his message would be driving him mad. But still with the outstretched hand, the fist.

  “Do I know you?” Seth urged.

  Then Seth blinked, and the figure was gone. Damn. He had the strongest feeling that this wasn’t a random visit. There was a job to do here but what?

  It had been over a week since the events of Ravenmeols Hospital and his fall from the roof and subsequent appearance in the lounge downstairs. Malc had found him and forced him to stay at the vicarage while he recuperated.

  Despite being in a safe environment, it hadn’t stopped the nightmares or the ever-deepe
ning sense of dread he’d felt since coming here. He counted the doors daily.

  Now that he was awake, there was little point in lying in the bed. His back had ached, and he needed the loo so he got out and headed for the toilet. He noted the doors as he passed, stepping softly past Malc and Georgia’s room, their door ajar so they could listen out for Joe whose bedroom was opposite theirs on the landing.

  After he relieved his bladder, he paused at the sink and listened. Had that been a noise from downstairs? Malc was as security conscious as they came and the house alarm would have sounded if there had been an intruder. Only, there it was again.

  Seth moved carefully down the stairs. The vicarage was old and everything creaked. He didn’t want to alert the intruder to his presence. At the bottom of the stairs, he reached for a golf club from Malc’s bag by the door and withdrew it carefully. The iron felt reassuringly heavy in his grip and he continued to the lounge.

  The noise came again, and as Seth stood in the doorway, he smiled at the shape of Joe curled up on the sofa, his dressing gown laid out on top of him as a substitute blanket. It was the second time since he’d stayed here that he’d found Joe on the sofa. The boy had a habit of sleepwalking and never quite made it back to his bed.

  Seth shivered as a cold breeze came from nowhere to skim across the back of his neck. He couldn’t leave the boy there, or he’d wake up grumpy and confused. Seth rested the golf iron against the wall and gently, he bent and scooped the boy up in his arms. Joe stirred and mumbled incoherently.

  “Shh. Go back to sleep.”

  Joe’s eyes snapped open, but he must have recognised Seth for he closed them again, a smile appeared on his lips and he hugged Seth and nodded off immediately.

  “You’re a good kid,” Seth cooed and took him back up to his room, past the snoring coming strong from Malc’s room, and deposited him back in his bed, pulling the duvet up and over his body. “Sweet dreams,” Seth muttered and backed out of the room.

  Georgia was standing in the doorway of her bedroom. She looked half-asleep and perhaps it was that that made it hard for her to hide her annoyance at seeing Seth still in her house.

  This had all come at the wrong time for Malc and Georgia Darvill. On the day before that terrible night at Ravenmeols, Georgia had suffered an early miscarriage. Knowing how long it had taken them to conceive with Joe, Seth understood what a devastating blow that had been to them both.

  “What’s up?” Georgia said softly.

  “I went to check on a noise downstairs and found Joe asleep on the sofa. I just brought him back up to bed. I’m sorry if I woke you,” he said and began to veer back to his room.

  “I couldn’t sleep,” she replied. “Do you want a tea?”

  Surprised, Seth nodded and followed her down to the kitchen where she flicked on the kettle. During the making of the tea she kept conversation to a minimum and once made, she set a mug of tea in front of him and rested back against the fridge door. Her eyes were narrow, and he thought they looked puffy, like she’d been crying.

  “What happened to you at the hospital?”

  Seth coughed on his tea and set it down carefully, not wanting to catch her gaze. “What did Malc say?”

  “Never mind what Malc said,” she replied quietly. “I want to hear what happened from you.”

  Seth blew on his tea. As far as he knew, Malc didn’t talk about Seth’s abilities. It would unsettle her.

  “I was paid to make sure a ghost hunt ran smoothly. There were some concerns about health and safety.”

  “And that’s what you do? You earn your money doing health and safety inspections?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “You never talk about your work. If I bring it up, you change the subject.”

  “It’s really not very interesting.”

  “I think it is. I found your website.” She set her cup on the side and rested her hands on the back of the chair. “You hire yourself out. You claim to be a medium and do a bit of paranormal investigating on the side.”

  Seth paused. It had always been an unspoken rule between him and Malc that he shouldn’t discuss what he did. Georgia was unlikely to be sympathetic, and if word got back to the bishop that Malc was friends with a man selling his mediumship skills there would be some difficult conversations to be had.

  But now didn’t seem like the time to continue the lie. “It’s true. I am.”

  A smile then, perhaps the first genuine smile he’d seen on her face all week.

  “Is that a problem?” he asked.

  “Malc can’t be associated with someone like you.”

  “Someone like me?”

  She couldn’t hold his gaze.

  “He’s the vicar. You make a living out of gullible old ladies.”

  The vitriol stung like a scorpion’s tail. Targeted and without mercy. She’d been saving this assault for just the right moment.

  “I’m not a conman.”

  “But you do readings for people?”

  “Sometimes. But other times, people need reassurance when odd things take place in their homes.”

  “You’re a ghost buster then?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “But similar?”

  He shrugged. It didn’t seem worth arguing the toss. He took another sip of tea and considered going back up to bed. There was no chance this conversation would get any better and it might be worth removing himself from the situation before things turned uglier.

  “At Ravenmeols, I was paid to monitor the caretaker at the hospital, but the man who’d paid me to do so had set me up. There were bad things waiting, and they almost beat me.”

  Her face scrunched up, and she moved her fingers through her hair. “And what were these bad things? Ghosts?”

  “Worse,” he said frowning. “Sorry, I’m exhausted.”

  He stood and placed his half-empty cup on the sideboard, but as he turned to head up the stairs, she said something that made him stop in his tracks.

  “I want you to leave.”

  He paused.

  “I want you gone tomorrow. I don’t want you in my house anymore. You’re a bad influence on Malc, and Joe is asking questions.”

  “OK. I’ll go tomorrow. It’s not a problem.”

  She nodded, now that she’d got her words out, she seemed deflated. She brushed past him and didn’t look back.

  Seth looked at her departing back then wandered into the lounge. He stood staring into the dark garden, wondering how long the impact of that night would stay with him.

  3

  The nightmares kept on coming. Every night, without fail, and Judy Doyle was sick of it. This latest one was a regular, and every night, within about thirty minutes of falling asleep, she found herself back at the hospital, back in that inner sanctum, chained to that pentagram, and feeling the cold against her bare skin as the Adherents of the Fourth readied her for the possession ritual.

  Six months ago, her nightmares had been far more banal and easier to deal with. It was almost funny how it had taken the experience of a night in a haunted asylum to trump her memories of living with her husband.

  As she’d passed Jemma’s room on the way downstairs, she’d snuck her head in and watched her sleeping daughter for a minute. Maybe one day, when Jemma was older, Judy would tell her what had happened at Ravenmeols. But the girl was still acclimatising to life without her dad, and there was only so much an eleven-year-old could take. It just wouldn’t be fair to burden her with more.

  Judy sat at the kitchen table, nursing a cup of tea, glancing at the clock now and then, willing the hands to turn faster so dawn would be here and she could legitimately get up and get dressed and face the day as if everything was normal and ordinary and boring. Beside her cup was the notebook she’d been keeping since returning from Ravenmeols. She thumbed through it, glancing around the room, quickly counting the number of visible doors before checking it off against the number she’d written in the notebook. There was the back door, the cu
pboard to the pantry, and the door leading to the hallway. Three doors matched her previous recordings, so she shut the book again and placed her hands on it. Seth had shown her how insidious the Almost Doors could be and how counting them had been his way of managing the uncertainty that came with the ability to see them. On that night in the inner sanctum, she’d seen many doors to the Almost Realm, a gift Seth had called it.

  Right.

  What the hell kind of gift was it that let you see doors leading to hell?

  Only Seth hadn’t called it hell; he’d called in the Almost Realm, but she had no clue what that meant. Seth had been the strangest man she’d ever met and she couldn’t say for sure how much of what he’d told her was truthful or a pack of lies.

  The biggest lie was that he had died at Ravenmeols. For the best part of a week, she’d been led to believe that was the case, but finally she got a sheepish call from his vicar friend, Malc, who’d admitted that Seth had survived and was staying with him for a while. She’d wanted to see him. The bastard had pulled her along through that crazy night and shown her things she’d never wanted to know existed, but he had also saved her. If it hadn’t been for Seth, there would have been no survivors that night.

  But the morning after the phone call, she realised that she didn’t want to see him.

  “He wants to apologise,” Malc had told her. “He wants to see you’re OK.”

  “Then why has he got you ringing me up instead of calling me himself?”

  “He’s resting. He’s been through a lot.”

  “No shit.” She’d felt a pang of guilt for swearing at a vicar but in her mind. Malc had appeared from nowhere to save them in the inner sanctum, ready for a fight, not how she’d imagined any man of the cloth to be.

  Don’t trust anyone.

  Words Phil used to tell her.