Echoes (Whisper Trilogy Book 2)

by Michael Bray

  “How the hell did we get into such a friendly business?” Dane said with more than a little irritation.

  “Tell me about it. Fucking sharks the lot of them. Anyway, I’d better be off. I’ll be up there tomorrow morning. Can you hold the fort until then?”

  “Yeah, no problem.”

  “Good man. Trust me, this will all be worth it in the end.”

  “I hope so. I’ll see you tomorrow,” Dane said, ending the call. Standing for a moment to take in the conversation, Dane sighed and turned his attention back to the script as he strolled back towards the hotel.

  III

  Goodson had packed a bag and intended to get out of town for a few days. The rational side of his head told him Henry would understand why he had chosen to share his concerns with Rollins, yet the side which really knew Henry, the side which had seen how ruthless he could be, suspected he would be furious at what he would deem to be a double-cross.

  He checked the door had been locked, crossed to the window to peek through the gap in the curtains to check that the street was clear. Satisfied there was no sign of Henry, he returned to the bedroom and the half-packed suitcase. Throwing a few extra shirts in with the other items, he zipped up the case and thought about where he should go. He had a sister in Ohio who he could visit for a few days, or if it came to it, he could head overseas for a while. With all the tension of recent weeks, he was ready for a break. Somewhere warm preferably, with cheap booze and cheaper women. There was some kind of poetic justice to it, the idea of him sunning himself somewhere tropical whilst Henry Marshall finally got exactly what he deserved for his less than honest business practices over the years. Rollins had told him he might be called on to give evidence if things went to trial, to which Goodson had agreed as long as he received immunity from any prosecution. It was the perfect resolution.

  Grabbing his case off the bed and taking a last quick check out of the window to ensure the coast was clear, he took the chain off the door and unlocked it, drawing breath as he opened the door. There, standing perfectly still and glaring at him was Henry Marshall.

  “Henry, I wasn’t expecting you…” Goodson stammered.

  Henry didn’t reply.

  “I think we need to talk, Winston. I think you know what about.”

  “Look, please, try to understand from my point of view, Edgar Rollins said…”

  Henry zoned out as Goodson tried to make his excuses. The truth was it didn’t matter what it was he said. Henry had attempted to convince himself on the drive over that he just wanted to talk, although the truth was, the black thing inside him had ideas of its own. Death would be too easy, it had whispered to him as he’d driven across town. The punishment ought to fit the crime, it had added, giving him a few ideas and pointers about how to best deal with a backstabbing rat like Goodson. A calm euphoria had overcome him as he let those voices consume him, as he allowed them guide his actions to make sure he brought with him the right tools for the job in hand. He walked towards the door, Goodson backing up to keep the distance between them.

  “Henry, listen to me,” Goodson stammered. “It’s not too late to fix this. I can speak to Rollins he-”

  “Shhhhhh…” Henry said, smiling while closing and locking the door. “I just want us to talk. Nothing to worry about.”

  “I’m not afraid of you,” Goodson said, not fooling anyone.

  “Yes you are. If there’s one thing I don’t like, it’s a rat.”

  “Are you going to kill me?”

  “I was, but they had a better idea.”

  “Who did? I don’t know what you’re talking about!”

  ***

  Thirty minutes later, Henry washed his hands at the sink, making sure to scrub the blood from under his fingernails. He whistled a tune he couldn’t quite place, maybe from an old TV show or advertising jingle. He checked his watch and saw it was getting late. Drying his hands then making sure to fold the tea towel and hook it back over the oven door, he walked into the sitting room, sidestepping the streaky claret mess on the floor. Henry paused to look at Goodson, lying motionless on his side, his face a mask of blood, and wondered if he’d died after all. His eye sockets were deep voids of pulp, and Henry instantly recalled the feeling of crushing the eyeballs, allowing the jelly-like viscera to squirt between his fingers. The tongue was harder to remove. Goodson had been thrashing and struggling, but it was only when Henry had been forced to smash his former employee’s teeth to get to the tongue that he’d finally subsided. It lay a few feet from him, a pinkish slug which had caused its former owner no end of trouble.

  Goodson kicked out a leg, and half rolled onto his side, sending fresh blood pouring out onto the hardwood floor.

  Good. He was still alive to hear.

  “I’m sorry it had to come to this, Winston,” Henry said with a sigh as he started to dress, grateful he had removed his clothes before any of the mess was made. “If anything, I hope you take it as a lesson. One learned in the most poignant of ways.”

  Goodson writhed and moaned, mouthing words which he would never be able to say.

  “In life sometimes, you have to choose sides. Sometimes you choose well, other times you make the wrong call. This, my friend, is what happens when you make the latter. You may feel harshly treated after what I was forced to do to you. If you really think about it, what choice did I have? You saw things you had no right to see, and spoke about them to people who should never have known. Removing the tools of your trade was the only option I had.”

  Henry approached, his shoe skidding in the blood as he crouched beside Goodson. “Now, all you have is me. You will never speak, nor will you see.” Henry leaned close and whispered in Goodson’s ear. “I will live forever in your dreams.”

  He stood, wincing as his arthritic knee cracked. “Enjoy the rest of your life Goodson. I hope you learned a valuable lesson today.”

  Henry let himself out of the apartment, taking a last look at Goodson as he blindly writhed around in a pool of blood and broken teeth.

  CHAPTER 16

  Emma, Cody, Scott and Carrie arrived late, checking in a little after 10pm. Excited already, the feeling only grew when they saw the host of Paranormal Truth branded trucks outside and the seemingly endless lines of cable snaking around the building. There was an entirely different atmosphere to the hotel now it was staffed and blazed with light. They checked into two rooms, with Emma and Carrie in one, and the boys in the other. The rooms themselves were medium-sized affairs, neutral in their décor. The single windows faced out over the car park and offered a good view of the forest. With Alex’s words on her mind, Emma wasn’t sure sleep would come easy, but was surprised to have woken up feeling well rested after a trouble-free and comfortable night. As she and Carrie walked through the lobby the next morning to the dining room, she heard the steady hum of chatter and caught the smell of delicious cooked bacon and strong coffee.

  “You sleep okay?” Emma asked.

  “Fine.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing.”

  “You sure?”

  “I said I’m fine. Stop mothering me all the time,” Carrie hissed.

  “I wasn’t I…”

  Carrie strode into the dining room, a confused Emma behind her.

  Scott and Cody were already there, waving them over to the two empty seats opposite. Emma tried to catch Carrie’s eye, desperate to know what was wrong. Without success, and now even more confused, she instead turned her attention to the other guests. She recognized Dane Marshall of course from his TV show, and had seen Henry around Oakwell. The rest of the people were unfamiliar. The two girls sat as Henry strode to the center of the room.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Riverwood. Tonight you will embark on a televised quest to discover the truth about the legends of these woods and the house which used to sit on these very grounds. Of course, many of you will not know each other, and I’ll leave the bulk of the mingling to you as individuals. If you hav
e any problems or questions, either speak to me or my brother Dane, who I’m sure you all recognize from his television show. Have a good breakfast and prepare for a day of investigation.”

  “To add,” Dane said between sips of his coffee. “You’ll have noticed a lot of lights and TV cameras around. There are more out in the grounds too. Please try to ignore them. Act as if they aren’t there. Thank you.”

  Henry left them to their meal as the general chatter resumed. Emma and Carrie grabbed breakfast from the self-serve buffet and returned to their seats. Scott was sitting opposite Carrie, and was in conversation with a thin man with high cheekbones and a neat goatee beard.

  “This is Bruce,” Scott said as he grinned at the girls. “He’s a direct descendant of Will Jones, the guy who built Hope House. He owns the land here.”

  “Co-owns,” Bruce corrected with a smile. “Mr. Marshall owns half of it.”

  “I thought Will had no family?” Carrie said. “I’m sure I remember reading it somewhere.”

  “You probably did,” Bruce said. “I didn’t know we were related until Mr. Marshall came to look for me. It seems Will had an affair with my mother when they were both too young to know any better. I grew up without any knowledge of the family lineage until earlier this year.”

  “How did you end up owning the lands if you didn’t know you were even part of the Jones family?” Carrie said.

  Bruce turned towards her and smiled. “It turns out my father knew well enough about me even if he never directly spoke of me. My mother always thought it was best if I grew up without knowing him. The man who brought me up, Alan Kent, is the man I call father. Will Jones might be my biological kin but he means nothing to me.”

  “So how did you go from no knowledge of Will’s existence to co-owning the land?” Carrie asked.

  It’s quite simple really,” Bruce said with a smile. “Mr. Marshall was kind enough to sit down with me and go through the history of what happened with me prior to purchasing his share of the land.”

  “Is it information you’d be willing to share?” Carrie asked.

  “I don’t see why not, if you really want to hear it.”

  “Definitely. We’re all really interested in the stories of what happened here. The history as we know it is spotty though, especially around the early years of the Hope House build.”

  “I can fill you in about that easily enough. This is how I understand it to have gone down. Will’s great grandfather, Michael, first bought the land for the Hope House project to begin sometime back in the early eighteen-hundreds. After his death it was passed down to his son, Alfred, who decided to lease the house separately whilst keeping the land. There were plans in those early years to still go ahead with the housing project, of which Hope House was just the first. Of course, there were all sorts of problems in the place itself which are well documented. When the murders and suicides grew in frequency, Alfred decided it was becoming more trouble than it was worth, and so decided to sell to the bank under the agreement that he would retain anonymous control and ownership of the lands it sat on.”

  “Is something like that legal?” Scott asked.

  “That was my first thought too. You have to remember though, banking was different back then. Banks were small companies run by a manager who knew you by first name terms. There were no credit checks or any of the stuff you have today. If you were respectable and trustworthy, a deal could usually be struck. Anyway, my grandfather and the bank worked out some loophole which would keep both house and lands separate whilst under the same ownership. The bank would keep fifty percent of the revenue from the rent or sale of the house. My grandfather would remain anonymous. Anyhow, over time, things got messy and the bank, which was a family-run business, foreclosed. My grandfather re-purchased the land from them before they went out of business, hoping that by giving the land as one to the next generation of the family it would inspire them to follow through with the initial plan to build a self-sufficient forest town for the rich to make home.”

  “That obviously never happened,” Emma said.

  “Give him a chance to tell us why,” Carrie snapped.

  Bruce cleared his throat, looked at the two girls, then went on.

  “You’re right of course. The series of deaths and suicides were really starting to make the public afraid. Even the banks were growing weary. There were so many deaths that the house was taken off sale and made into a rental property, just to avoid the headache of trawling through paperwork every time someone died there. The deeds to the land were eventually passed on to Will along with the Old Oak tavern. He knew the history of course. It had been a stain on our family history for years. Although he wasn’t willing to offload the land due to the sentimental value to the family, he wanted no part of the house. He approached a local woman about somehow protecting the house for anyone who lived there. She was something of a practicing witch.”

  “Annie Briggs,” Emma said. “My grandma knew her.”

  “Yeah, that’s her,” Bruce said with a nod. “She did something, some kind of protective voodoo shit to cleanse the house, and although skeptical at first, Will found that it worked. The house was put on the market and leased by an old couple who lived there trouble-free for some time before they decided to move to Australia. Will still didn’t want any dealings with it, and put the house up for sale via Donovan’s real estates.”

  “I still don’t get it,” Scott said. “If the house was sold to the Samsons, wouldn’t the land be theirs even taking the fire into account?”

  “It was. After the fire, the Samsons didn’t want anything to do with the place, including paying the mortgage repayments. The banks repossessed the land, which was sold back to the Jones estate for a knockdown price. Of course, with Will dead, the lawyers in charge of his estate started digging in search of a next of kin and found me. You could have knocked me over with a feather when I found out I owned a good chunk of land and a bar to boot.”

  “You own the Oak too?” Scott asked.

  “Yeah, it seems so.”

  “It’s been closed since the uh… incident.”

  “You can say it,” Bruce said. “Since my father’s murder. I know.”

  “Do you plan to re-open?” Carrie asked.

  “I don’t know yet. I’m looking into it. I already have a life away from Oakwell as well as a business selling used cars, so it’s a big ask. Anyway, what about you kids? What brings you here?”

  “We won tickets,” Scott said. “Or at least, she did.” He nodded at Carrie.

  “My dad works for the local radio station. He got some free promos given. He knew the four of us were already really interested in the story of what had happened here, and so gave us them.”

  “Nice. So do you believe it?” Bruce asked, grinning at them in turn. “Not the murders. The other stuff. The haunting.”

  Emma was about to answer when her eye was drawn to the dining room entrance. The others saw too and the chatter in the room was almost instantly silenced. Steve and Melody walked into the room, keeping their heads low, sitting down at the top of the table. Even though many of the people in the room didn’t know each other, almost every single one of them knew exactly who the new arrivals were. They were as much a part of the legend as any other part of it now. The ones who got away. The ones who had beaten the curse. Steve pulled his baseball cap lower to hide his burns as best he could, trying to ignore the army of eyes trained on him. Melody poured them both a coffee, also trying to ignore the stares. Gradually, the conversation picked up again amid occasional glances at the new arrivals.

  “Did you know they were coming?” Scott whispered across the table to Carrie, his grin wide and white.

  “You think I’d have kept it to myself if I had known?” she replied. “I can’t believe someone managed to get them to come here. They have some balls.”

  “Who are they?” Bruce asked, flicking a quick glance to the head of the table.

  “You don’t know?” Scott rep
lied.

  “Hey, gimmie a break here. This is all new to me. I can’t help it if I don’t know everything.”

  “How much do you know about the last owners of Hope House?” Scott whispered, unable to stop staring like a star-struck teenager at Steve and Melody.

  “A little. I know they believed in the curse that the fire was started by Donovan the same night he killed my father, and that he wanted to kill the Sampsons but ended up dying in the fire himself.”

  “Yeah, well that’s them.”

  “Who?”

  “The ones who used to live here, or in the house I should say. They were the last people to live in Hope House. They were the ones who got away.” Scott said, clearly enjoying the drama.

  “Bullshit!” Bruce said, now also grinning like Scott.

  “It’s true,” Carrie said, smiling at Bruce. “The man who killed your father, Donovan, had taken a shine to her,” she said, nodding at Melody. “Drove him crazy apparently.”Scott picked up the story from Carrie, noting that a few of the crew at the neighboring seats were now also listening in. “The official word is he made a mistake, and the fire got out of control, trapping him. There are rumors though that the spirits of the house drove him mad and made them both stay in the house and wait to be burned to death. The guy Donovan didn’t have the strength to fight, but according to rumor, the husband did. Maybe it was the love for his wife or something, I don’t know. Whatever it was he just about managed to escape with his life before the house burned to the ground around him. Take a look at him. You can see the burns.”

  Bruce and a few of the crew were now craning their necks to catch a glimpse of the burns.

  Emma was only half listening. She was watching Cody. He was showing signs of returning to the Cody of old until the Samsons had walked into the room. Now, he was staring at them, his eyes filled with something which frightened her. It was more than rage. It was some kind of darkness, an arrogance and ancient knowledge which was absolutely frightening.