by Tim McGregor
Contents
title
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
Afterword
Thank you
other works
the
SPOOKSHOW
Book One
Tim McGregor
1
“SOMETHING BAD HAPPENED here.”
“Like what?”
“Death,” Billie said, stepping farther into the darkness of the derelict property. The air was damp and it reeked of rot and mildew and other foul things. Cutting through all of it was a thick sense of dread that hung in the air like a bad omen.
The other two women lingered in the doorway, reluctant to venture any further. One held a flashlight, the other a big camera. They exchanged glances.
“More than one?” asked Kaitlin. She trained the beam of the flashlight over the peeling walls.
Billie strode into the centre of the room, her shoes crunching over the grit on the floor. “A lot more. At least one of them was a murder.”
Tammy adjusted the camera in her hand, jostling Kaitlin for elbow room. “How do you know that, Billie?”
“Because,” Billie said. “The woman who died here just told me so.”
A shudder passed through the two women in the doorway. Kaitlin, forever intrigued by anything spooky, said “Where is she?”
“On your left. Touching your hair.”
Kaitlin screamed and the flash on Tammy’s camera popped, strobing the room in a white flare. The two women scrambled back into the hallway, alternately cursing and laughing.
Billie Culpepper was swallowed by the darkness when her friend scampered away with their only flashlight. The absence of light didn’t bother her, not these days anyway. It came with the territory really, with this new vocation that she had accepted but had never even wanted in the first place. Seeing the dead. She wouldn’t wish it on her worst enemy.
She didn’t need light to see the dead anyway. Her eyes were now open to the lost souls that were there, in both the bright sun of midday and the blind pitch of night. Even if she squeezed her eyes shut, the dead were still there.
She did, however, need light to see where she was going. The last thing she wanted was to trip over the broken furniture and fall on something rusty and sharp. The abandoned house around them was a deathtrap. She shouldn’t have come in the first place, even when Tammy and Kaitlin insisted on exploring it on their own. Pulling her cell from her back-pocket, she hit the flashlight app but the beam was milky and weak.
Billie looked up quickly when the dead woman drifted too close. She wore a drab smock that was stained down the front and her skin was so white she was almost translucent. Dark fluid was dribbling out of her mouth and her thin hand clawed the air, reaching for her.
“Don’t touch me,” Billie said.
The pale woman stopped, her hand recoiling as if she had touched something hot.
Billie never liked looking into the eyes of the dead but sometimes it was necessary to get their full attention. This woman’s eyes were cloudy and colourless, like that of a dead fish left too long in the sun. “What happened to you?”
The dead woman’s mouth puckered but she said nothing. That in itself was unusual. When Billie opened herself up to the other side, the dead came running, eager to tell the sad tale of their demise. Their grievances, their unfair treatment and their unresolved vengeances. The woman with the black blood dribbling off her chin remained silent. She scrutinized Billie with her milky eyes, as if seeing something she did not understand. She lashed out again, fast this time, and plunged her hand through Billie’s ribcage. Her touch was frigid and Billie felt the woman’s icicle fingers lock around her heart. The pain took her breath away.
“Stop it,” she snapped. Normally, the dead could be pushed away when they became aggressive but this one was strong. It took all Billie had to shove the dead woman away. The woman sneered at her with venomous eyes before withdrawing back into the darkness.
“All right, you guys,” Billie called after catching her breath. “You can come back. She’s gone.”
Kaitlin and Tammy wedged themselves back into the span of the doorway. “Are you sure?” Tammy said.
“Yes.” Billie brushed her hands off. She hadn’t touched a single thing since entering the condemned building but her hands still felt grimy. “Seen enough? Can we go now?”
Kaitlin swept the throw of the flashlight across the room just to make sure. Something dripped from the bubbled plaster of the ceiling. “We’re just getting started.”
Billie sighed. “Make it fast then. I can’t stay too long in here. It’s making me ill.”
“What do you mean? You’re gonna be sick?” Tammy asked.
“It always makes me sick.”
Tammy fitted a higher grade flash to her camera. “Okay. Just a few more rooms, then we’ll go.”
“Don’t be a buzzkill,” Kaitlin moaned. “Aren’t you having fun?”
Billie frowned. “Chasing ghosts isn’t a joke, Kaitlin. It comes with a cost.”
“Jeez Louise.” Kaitlin passed the flashlight over the ceiling. They were standing in a large atrium with a wall of windows that looked out over the choked gardens. On the opposite side were two corridors and one closed door. “Which way?”
“Straight ahead,” Tammy said.
Kaitlin agreed but neither of them took a step forward. She looked at Billie with a sheepish smile. “You first.”
~
Sybil was her given name but to everyone she was just Billie. The only person who had ever called her Sybil was her mother and Billie hadn’t been addressed by that name since she was eight years old. On occasion, Tammy would call her by her given name but that was only to get under her skin. And that was before the accident. Tammy hadn’t done it since.
Two months ago, her friends had confronted Billie about her odd behaviour, her sudden withdrawal from the world. Tammy, Kaitlin and Jen (who had refused to come tonight) barged into Billie’s apartment and demanded to know what was going on with her. Fragile and exhausted, Billie had blurted out the truth, that since waking up in the hospital, she could see the dead. And they could see her.
Conversation killer. The three women chalked it up to delusion and stress and, for the most part, they never spoke of it again. Billie didn’t pursue it either, slowly coming back to the old routine and faking her way through being normal. Kaitlin was the only one who mentioned it again, intrigued by the paranormal, a lover of good ghost stories. Billie brushed it off as politely as possible. The world had turned upside down on her and the small circle of friends she had was often the only anchor she could cling to. Separating the two was an imperative now, if she was to remain sane.
The dead were relentless in their need to be heard. They had tormented Billie until she learnt to close herself off to them. It worked most of the time but the strong ones, the dispossessed souls that still burned with rage, these ghosts tracked her down like bloodhounds. There were days when Billie exiled herself to the little apartment on the third floor, unwilling to face the daylight.
Yesterday, Kaitlin had come to her breathless and urgent.
“They’re tearing it down,” she panted.
“Tearing what down?” Billie had asked. In retrospect, she should have just ignored the girl.
“The Murder House.”
“What house?”
Kaitlin grew impatient. “The old ruins up the mountain.”
There was no actual mountain. It was an escarpment that rose up on the southern flank of Hamilton, Ontario, adopted city to Billie and her small cadre of friends. Steeltown. The Hammer. An industrial giant that had rusted up and seized sometime in the late seventies before being beaten black and blue by recessions, shifting economic powers and corporate takeovers that slaughtered the pensions of its former workers. After choking on the fumes of its own death rattle, the Ambitious City had regrouped and signs of new life were popping up here and there like algae blooms on a dead lake.
“Up the mountain” meant up the escarpment, past the former rich part of town to the farmland above the city. The Murder House was halfway up the hill on a winding street choked by hemlock and oak trees. The crumbling manor was brittle with rot and overgrown with weeds. Its reputation as a haunted house was deeply entrenched, despite the fact that few citizens had ventured inside the place over the last seventy-odd years.
“Why are they tearing it down,” Billie asked, idly curious but uncaring.
“Who knows,” Tammy added, following Kaitlin inside. “But we want to see inside. Before it’s gone forever.”
Jen, Billie’s oldest friend, was also there. She dismissed the idea outright. “What’s there to see? It’s just an old house.”
“It’s haunted,” Kaitlin gushed. “I’ve always wanted to see inside. And this is our last chance. It’s slated for demolition.”
“And I can shoot it,” Tammy added. “The inside of that place would make for great photographs.”
At least Tammy’s reasons were sensible. Professional even. She was a photographer and the thing she loved shooting the most was decay. She had a knack for capturing urban ruin that was beautiful. Tammy was probably right too, the interior of a place that had been abandoned for decades played to her strengths.
Kaitlin’s motives were little more suspect. “We want you to come,” she’d said. “So we can see you in action.”
Jen refused to hear anymore, wanting nothing to do with the hair-brained scheme. Billie agreed. She was surrounded by the dead at every turn, why would she go looking for more inside a decrepit place with a bad reputation?
Disappointed, Kaitlin begged her to at least think about it. Billie had agreed but that was only to get Kaitlin off her back. When Kaitlin called earlier to ask if she was coming, Billie’s answer remained the same. Kaitlin clucked her teeth and said that she and Tammy were going anyway. They’d tell her all about it when they came back.
Billie stewed over it for the next hour. Of the four friends she still had left, Kaitlin was the one she was least close to. An odd bird in some ways. Kaitlin had been spoiled and over-indulged by her well-off parents and, as a result, had difficulty taking no for an answer. Her interest in the paranormal had been a lifelong obsession, first stirred by an aunt who cast fortunes in the throw of the Tarot.
The clock ticked on and Billie stewed until the guilt nibbled her resolve. The Murder House had been the object of conjecture and local folklore since the Second World War. Murders were said to have taken place there yet no one had ever uncovered any factual evidence to back up this claim. Still, the crumbling house had stood unoccupied and unsold for seventy years. The odds were that the place really was haunted and her two friends were walking straight into trouble.
So off she went, to watch over their crazy antics in case Tammy and Kaitlin ran into anything nasty. Riding her bike up the mountain proved tortuous and she disembarked halfway up, walking it the rest of the way until she found the street marked Laguna Road and caught up to her wayward friends. Kaitlin and Tammy had been relieved to see her.
The house stood back from the road at the end of a long driveway that was overgrown with foliage. A big Georgian home of brick with its array of broken windows and an arched portcullis that slanted to one side. All of it tucked away behind an imposing wrought iron fence.
Leaning her bike against the trunk of a tree, Billie understood why her friends seemed relieved to see her. Even at this distance she could feel it, a clammy prickle of unease that crept down the small of her back.
Evil. The house reeked of it.
2
IT WAS A dumb idea and Billie was not polite when she reiterated this fact to her friends.
Tammy agreed, ready to chuck the whole plan now that they were inside the house. Neither she nor Kaitlin were sensitives in any way but one didn’t need any gift to feel the cold flush of dread that clung to the old house. The Murder House, as it was known, simply felt wrong. Even rodents steered clear of it.
Kaitlin was having none of it. “You two are lame,” she sneered. “This is our last chance to see this place. Let’s go.”
They gained entry through a service door on the east side. The main entrance and first floor windows were all boarded up and inaccessible but the service door had been pried open long ago. Generations of teenagers and thrill-seekers had stomped in and out of the murder house over the decades. Inside, the walls were muddy with graffiti and the floors littered with bottles and trash. Like any other party location, there were discarded condoms strewn about in every room the trio passed through. Billie couldn’t imagine doing it in such an awful place, even on a dare.
Tammy aimed and snapped her camera through the foyer and the parlour, working fast to catch the last of the twilight before night fell completely. They ventured into a large hall where their footfalls echoed up to the vaulted ceiling.
Tammy adjusted her camera again. “Have you seen enough, Kaitlin?”
“Nope.” Kaitlin scanned the ceiling above, the tall fireplace at one end. “What do you see, Billie? Any ghosts here?”
No reply came. Kaitlin and Tammy both spun around. “Bee?”
Billie was doubled over, clutching her side as if she had just cramped up after a long run. “They’re everywhere,” she hushed.
They both rushed back, Tammy getting there first. “What’s wrong?”
“It hurts sometimes.” Billie straightened up and blew her bangs from her eyes. “Being this close to them.”
“Ghosts?” Kaitlin startled.
Billie nodded. She was uncomfortable revealing this much to her friends. They still thought of her as normal. Sort of. “Are we done here?”
“We should go.” Tammy fired a harsh look at Kaitlin before turning back to Billie. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah. Just take a step back. I might hurl.”
Kaitlin watched her friend with dished eyes, entranced by the hint of something beyond her ken. “Billie, what do you see?”
Billie eyes were fixed on something in the darkness and she winced, as if witnessing something terrible. “Faces sometimes, coming out of the darkness. Sometimes just shadows.”
“Can you see them clearly?” Kaitlin asked. “Are they all gross and stuff?”
Billie took another breath, the nausea ebbing away. “It’s more than just sight. It’s feeling. Emotions. It’s hard to explain.”
Kaitlin reached out and held Billie’s arm. “Can you try? If it’s too much, that’s okay but, I’ve always wanted to know.”
Shaking it off, Billie surveyed the large hall. Then her mouth twisted, as if she had tasted something sour. “There’s a man by the window, staring at us. The hatred in his eyes is freaky. He hates women. He’s done bad things to women before. And he wants to hurt the three of us.”
The two women snapped their necks around to check the row of tall windows that looked out over the gardens. There was no one there.
“Can he hurt us?” Tammy asked, a quiver of uncertainty rattling her scepticism.
“He might.”
“Who is he?” Kaitlin whispered, as if afraid she’d scare the unseen phantom away. “What’s his name?”
Billie shook her head. “He won’t say. None of them will.”
Tammy gulped. “How many are there?”
“More than I can count. I need to get out of this room.”
Cro
ssing out into the corridor, Tammy took Billie by the elbow, worried she might keel over. “Do they always try and hurt you?”
“Some don’t mean to. But I can feel what killed them. It’s like an echo.”
Kaitlin drew up on Billie’s flank. “So what about him? Can you tell what killed him?”
“Something to do with his lungs. Like T.B., maybe.”
“What else?” Kaitlin urged.
“Misery. A lot of bad things happened here. A lot of death.”
“So it is a murder house,” Kaitlin concluded. “Who was murdered here?”
“I don’t know. They won’t come close.” The nausea finally abated and Billie sighed, as if to flush it out. “They’re still afraid.”
Tammy bit her lip. “I think it’s time to go.”
“We just got here,” Kaitlin protested.
“It’s making her sick, Kay.” Tammy stopped in her tracks. “Haven’t you seen enough?”
“Just a little longer. Please? Unless it’s really bad. Billie, can we keep going or is it too much?”
Where the two young women had stopped, Billie carried on, shuffling toward a door under the staircase.
“Billie? You all right?”
The knob squealed as it turned and Billie swept the door open. Stairs led down into darkness. “There’s something down here.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. Let me have the flashlight.”
Kaitlin handed across the heavy Maglite but Tammy blocked her path. “No way are we going down into the basement.”
“Don’t be a chicken-shit,” Kaitlin scolded.
Billie said nothing. She took the flashlight and let the beam ripple along the worn steps. And then she followed it down.
Kaitlin smirked and went next. Tammy cursed them both and hurried to catch up.
The cellar was clammy and it smelled of earth. Forgotten tables and chairs were pushed against the brick walls, a narrow pathway cutting through piles of trash and splintered wood.
Kaitlin followed close behind Billie, her knees jostling into the tangles of old furniture. “What’s down here?”
