When Darkness Falls - Six Paranormal Novels in One Boxed Set

by Shalini Boland

  “Hold tight, Mares,” Lacey says. “It’s gonna be fine.”

  “What’s doing this?” I whisper. “What is it?”

  Her voice changes to a lower register. “It’s a spirit. I can feel her. She’s pretty scary. Um, maybe a bit on the evil side.”

  A tear rolls down my nose. I watch as Seth grapples along the framework, moving closer to the seat above us. Why would anything do this to us?

  But then it isn’t the first time I’ve faced evil. The difference being that last time the evil was human.

  Seth’s fingers miss on his first reach towards the upper carriage. I gasp, hoping, praying he can make it. He swings on one arm, the tension visible on his strained face.

  “Hold on,” I shout, somehow hoping it will help. “A few inches to your right, grab the bar.”

  Seth swings one more time. He does it! His fingers loop over the bench, gripping the carriage above us. My heart leaps into my mouth. Lacey lets out a “Wooohooo!” He’s going to be all right.

  The next arm reaches out as he clings on with his legs and one hand. First time, miss. Second time, gets it. Now all he needs to do is pull the rest of his body onto the bench. I grip the back of my seat, tingling nerves swimming in my stomach, the whiskey churning, burning, turning.

  Please.

  Seth begins to pull himself up.

  The wheel lurches forward. The chain on my seat breaks and time seems to freeze.

  The first time in my life that I faced death, I rejected it. I decided that I wouldn’t die in the fire at my school. I made the decision right then and there that I would get myself out alive, and I did. The second time I faced death, I accepted it. I realised that I had lived with the shadow of it hanging over my existence, stopping me from truly living. At that moment, I let it go.

  Lacey died instead of me.

  This time, I want to live, and I don’t want to lose anyone else, even the fairground guy who stepped into my life less than five hours ago. But, unlike the first time, I’m not afraid, not even of the pain. I think that’s how I manage to jump.

  And grasp the side of the Ferris wheel.

  Seth hangs from the bench above, his face pure purple with effort, his arms strained.

  “Hold on, Mary. I can… get… myself… up,” he says, lifting his dangling legs with his forearms.

  The wheel is stuck… for now… and I use the stillness to my advantage, climbing up the framework so I can meet Seth in the upper carriage.

  Lacey crawls up the wheel, showing me where I can take a handhold, where I can avoid hot lights, and where I can shove the toe of my trainers to gain purchase.

  I’m not strong, and I’m forced to reach inside myself for the extra strength to keep me going, to stop my muscles from giving up. The next time I glance across at Seth, he’s in the bench, leaning back in the seat, his chest rising and falling, a glazed look of shock on his face. I know the feeling.

  His eyes snap to mine and in an instant he’s out of his trance and working to help me. On his belly, he reaches forwards, underneath the safety bar, so I can take hold of his hands.

  “A little further, Mary, you can do it,” he says. His voice trembles very slightly, but it is far calmer, and far stronger than I feel inside.

  My calves burn with the effort. My arms ache. My heart thumps against my ribcage. I don’t care. We’re making it. We’re doing this. I won’t be like that boy in the car park. I push myself forwards. Then I grip with my knees and lean my body weight against the metal as I reach out towards Seth.

  His fingers flex towards me. “You can do this.”

  It’s that moment again; that life or death moment when thoughts rush through your brain like a speeding train. I can’t do this. Yes, you can. Remember when you were little and you fell off your bike and broke your arm? Yeah? Well this is gonna hurt a hundred times more than that.

  Acceptance.

  “Mary, reach for him.” It’s Lacey’s voice, soothing and believing. She always believed. Always.

  I reach out for him, our fingers touch but they don’t connect.

  Then again, Lacey died believing.

  I’m not Lacey.

  My fingers curl over his. He wiggles forward, getting a better hold of me.

  “She’s here,” Lacey whispers. “I can… I’ll find her. I’ll stop her.”

  “Yeah, you do that,” I say, struggling to keep hold of Seth.

  “Let go, Mary, I’ve got you,” Seth says.

  Let go.

  Are there two words in the English language more laden with meaning?

  I do. And in doing it, I soar. No, I don’t fall, I dangle, struggling to pull myself onto the seat above, but there’s something about the feeling of putting all your trust in one person; it fills your heart with this freeing sensation that tells you life will never be the same again. I’ve opened myself now. Maybe it will never close.

  By some miracle, I end up squirming under the safety bar and into Seth’s arms. He’s sticky with sweat, his heart hammers against his chest, thrumming beneath my ear. He holds me fiercely.

  “I can’t believe we did it,” he says.

  “Now we just need to get down.”

  We break into manic giggles, the stress and the enormity of our achievement hitting us both at the same time. Below us, a crowd has gathered. One of the fairground workers shouts up.

  “We’ve called the services, Seth. Hold tight.”

  “Oh, I plan to,” Seth shouts down.

  Lacey is nowhere to be seen. The things she said… about a spirit? An evil spirit. I worry for her. Yeah, she’s dead, but can ghosts hurt each other? Can one send the other somewhere… unpleasant? I remember the way the ghosts of Dr. Gethen’s victims dragged him beneath them, eating at his flesh. His screams still haunt me in my dreams.

  I swallow. It isn’t over yet. We’re not down on the ground.

  We both watch the fairground workers below, gripping each other’s hands, our jaws clenched, no more words to be spoken. They stand in a group, waiting, probably feeling as useless as we do. Damo is with them. He must have given up on the controls, worried he was making matters worse.

  I start to sink into my seat, concern for Lacey weighing me down. Where did she go? Where does she go when she leaves me? Is it horrible? Is it peaceful?

  Another cold shudder passes through my body when the Thing turns up once more. I see its bony white fingers first. Then it pulls its body up, so that its bright skull-face is level with mine. I swallow, trying hard not to scream.

  They don’t usually talk.

  They write. Messages on school walls, doctor’s windows.

  This one hisses to me.

  Cloaked in shadow,

  Cloaked in light,

  She takes the lives,

  To gain her might.

  And with that, it is gone. As always, I get the message, then it goes. My fingers tighten over Seth’s. He turns to me, sees my expression and tries to calm me.

  “Hey, it’s going to be all right, the fire department will be here soon. They’ll get us out no problem.”

  No they won’t. I know it’s going to happen before it starts. The wheel jerks forward. The music blares out. It spins. Fast now, faster than a Ferris wheel should go. The ground rushes towards us and, for a split second, I lose sense of reality. It’s like watching a film of someone free-falling towards the ground. The stress response of my brain tells me that this can’t be real, this can’t be happening, because it’s too much for me to handle.

  I see the fairground workers run towards the control booth and I know that this is very real. If we don’t act, we’ll be thrown out of our seats and halfway across the fairground.

  I know what to do. I know what we both have to do.

  Let go.

  “We have to jump,” I shout.

  “What?” Seth replies.

  “Jump! Now!”

  This is our chance. We’re maybe ten feet from the ground. We could get hurt but not die.


  I pull him up as hard as I can. Seth pushes himself higher until we’re on our feet. The world blurs around us. I glance to him, our eyes lock, and we jump.

  Weightless. A moment of pure freedom.

  And then the crushing ground. The cold scrape of compacted dirt on my cheeks.

  But Seth is next to me, and our hands are still entwined.

  Chapter Seven

  One moment bright stars, the next the blinking strip light of a hospital; one moment the dull ache of my back, the next, the pain gone; one moment Seth’s fingers entwined in mine, the next, gone, and Lacey by my side.

  “Are you all right?” she asks.

  “Yeah, I think so.” I manoeuvre myself so that I’m sat up in the hospital bed. “How long was I out for?”

  “Not long,” she replies. “During the ambulance ride and while the doctor examined you. It’s just after midnight.”

  I close my eyes and pull in a deep breath. “Is Seth okay?”

  “I think he’s in one of the rooms down the hall. He’s fine,” she answers.

  I let out a sigh of relief. “Do you know if anyone has told my parents?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “I hope they don’t sue. Maybe I can get back to the campsite before they even realise.” I pause, thinking through everything that happened. Some of it is a little jumbled up. My blood runs cold when I think of the Thing with its skull shining through translucent skin. “There was a spirit. What happened? Did you find it?”

  Lacey wraps her arms around her body. “I chased her. I chased her in my world, but I never caught up with her.” Her arms stretch further around her body, pulling herself tighter. I don’t like the haunted expression on her face.

  “What is it?” I ask.

  “She reeked,” Lacey replies. “She reeked of it. Pain, suffering, rage. There’s something not right about this place. If I were alive I would get goosebumps.” She stares down at her arms, sadly.

  “How do you know about her? Did you see her?”

  Lacey narrows her eyes as if concentrating on a memory. “Glimpses and feelings, mostly. She made her presence known to me. They don’t always do that. It was like she was trying to reach out, but then she clammed up and went inside herself.”

  “I didn’t see her,” I say, half to myself. “Why is that?”

  Lacey shrugs. “Maybe she doesn’t want you to see her. Maybe she wants to stay hidden.”

  “But how? How did she cause all that? You can’t even move a cup.”

  Lacey flashes me a glare. “Thanks for that reminder. Your guess is as good as mine. Maybe poltergeists are real. Hey, that means one day I might be able to touch things!” Her eyes flash bright with hope.

  I can’t help thinking that Lacey shouldn’t be hoping for corporeal form, she should be aiming to find peace, to go to wherever we should go when we die. At one point she will have to move on.

  The door opens and a doctor steps through.

  “Mary Hades,” he says, staring down at his clipboard. “You’re pretty bruised, but there’s no lasting damage. You need to collect a prescription from the pharmacy on the way out. Read the label carefully. The stuff is pretty mild, but according to your medical records the anti-psychotic medication you’re taking doesn’t play nice with most other pills, so be careful. And please… no more alcohol.”

  I can’t help the flush on my cheeks.

  “I’m free to go?” I ask.

  “Yes,” he says, finally meeting my eyes with his own wrinkled ones.

  “Did you ring my parents?”

  He rocks forward on his toes and raises his eyebrows. “No, I did not. You have minor injuries, your friend down the hall also has minor injuries. There’s no need.”

  Even better, they don’t have to hear about this at all. Lacey grins and winks at me.

  “Where’s Seth?” I ask the doctor.

  “If you mean the young man you were with, he’s right down the hall on the right.”

  “Thanks.” I gingerly climb down from the bed, stretching my sore muscles.

  “Miss Hades, if you don’t mind me saying… I have a daughter about your age. If I knew she was out until midnight with the kind of folk who work at carnivals, I would be… concerned. Please take care of yourself. The reception desk will phone for a taxi for you to get home.” He gives me a sad smile. “We can charge it to the hospital, on this one occasion.”

  “They don’t charge taxis to hospitals,” Lacey whispers in my ear. “He’ll probably pay for it himself.”

  “It’s okay, I have money,” I say. He seems like a nice man, a kind man, but the last doctor I knew tried to kill me. That alone makes me not want to owe him money.

  He gives an exasperated smile. “Very well. But please do be careful.” And with that, he’s gone.

  I hurry down the corridor, adrenaline coursing through my veins from the fall, the thought of seeing Seth, and the memories of the last hospital ward I stayed in. I lift my shoulders a few times, trying to shake the uneasy feeling those strip lights give me.

  Seth sits up on his hospital bed. He’s rubbing the back of his head and staring out of the window when I arrive. Before I knock on the open door to let him know I’m here, I watch him stare out of the window, completely alone, completely him. His shoulders are slumped, resigned. I hope he doesn’t blame himself for what happened. Or me.

  I knock.

  He doesn’t turn immediately. When he does, his eyes are slightly pink around the edges and a little puffy.

  “I was about to check on you. I’m glad you’re okay,” he says. His expression darkens. “No thanks to me. I should never have taken you on the ride after hours.”

  I move forwards, all too aware of Lacey by my side. She’s quieter than usual, not dancing around or pulling faces. Her eyes flit between the two of us.

  “It wasn’t your fault. There’s no way you could have known what would happen.” But I should have known. When will I learn to stop pulling people into my dangerous world?

  “I got a call,” Seth says. He draws in a sharp breath and scrunches the bedding up in his fists. “When we were in the ambulance on the way here, another piece fell from the Ferris wheel, a metal beam right from the top.” He stops talking and screws up his eyes. There’s dew on his eyelashes. “It killed Damo.”

  Without thinking I’m next to him on the bed, wrapping my arm around his shoulders. “Seth… I’m so sorry.”

  He pulls my arm from around him. “You should go, before I end up killing you, too.”

  “What are you talking about?” I’m the one with death as her companion. “You saved my life!”

  “If I’d never agreed… If I’d gone with you on the ride straight away, instead of waiting until the dark, until half the operators had gone home.” His voice begins to crack. “Go home. Go to whatever campsite or hotel you came from. Get out.”

  His words are like a shard of ice stabbing my abdomen. “Okay.”

  The rest of the hospital is a blur. It’s when I’m outside that I realise my cheeks are wet.

  “Well, that was marginally better than our last hospital stay,” Lacey says. “Mainly because last time, I died.”

  *

  It isn’t the sun filtering through the floral curtains that wakes me, or the smell of fried bacon, it’s Mum shaking me awake and telling me that the little boy’s death has been cleared as accidental, and the police have all gone. That means we can get on with our vacation, according to Mum. Her voice is shrill and her words come out quick as gunfire. It reminds me of many moments with her in the past, like when she told me I would have to go into hospital, or when I was little and my hamster died.

  My back aches and I swallow down a couple of painkillers with a glass of water. The prescription the doctor gave me is for something stronger, but I don’t know if I want to be on medication right now. I don’t have fond memories from taking anti-psychotics.

  As I walk into the main area of the caravan, I wonder how I’m going to ge
t through the rest of the week without telling my parents about falling from a Ferris wheel and almost dying. There’s no way they’d let me back to the fair if I tell them, and that would mean I might never see Seth again. So I walk carefully, trying not to wince as my back aches. Hopefully the bruises will go down in a few days. All of them are on my body and easily concealed.

  The real problem is what doesn’t fade after a few days. Since arriving in Nettleby there have been two accidental deaths. Neither of them were real accidents. Both were murder, at the hands of some evil poltergeist. That means there is a ghost lurking in the dark out there who has tried to kill me already.

  “How was the fair, sweetie? Did you make any new friends?” Mum asks over breakfast.

  I pick away a piece of bacon gristle. “I met one person, yeah.”

  “You came home late. Did you hit it off?”

  Hmm, how to answer that question? We fell off a Ferris wheel together and then his friend died, so, yes and no. “I don’t know. He—”

  Dad’s newspaper creases down, revealing his bespectacled visage. “He?”

  I roll my eyes with emphasis, as if to say don’t overreact. “Yes, he. We hung out for a while.”

  Mum smiles over her tea. “Did you get his number?”

  My heart sinks. Of course I didn’t. He yelled at me to get out of a hospital room while the smell of bleach hung in the air. He’d been grieving for his friend, angry and frustrated.

  “Sorry, honey. Was he good looking?”

  “Mum!” I widen my eyes at her.

  “I don’t want to know.” Dad rises from his chair, carrying his bacon sarnie in one hand.

  “Well?” She raises her eyebrows.

  “Yes, all right. He was.”

  Mum drums the table with excited fingers. “Oh, I can tell just from looking at your face. He’s downright gorgeous, isn’t he? Please tell me you used protection.”