When Darkness Falls - Six Paranormal Novels in One Boxed Set

by Shalini Boland

I recognise her in an instant.

  Dark hair hangs down her face. Her virgin-white dress is stained with red. The moor grass is underneath her feet. Behind her lurks a tall shadow.

  Amy.

  “Do you like toast? I hope so, because it’s pretty much all I have.” Seth places the tray on top of a precarious pile of books, filled with warm toast, butter, different jams, a pot of tea and a carton of orange juice. His concerned eyes meet mine. “Are you all right?”

  I stroke his cheek one more time, taking in every part of his face, memorising it forever. “I’m good. I’m better than good, I’m starving.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Where does the story end? That’s what it’s all about. It’s what we all want to know.

  Some of us think we already know the answer. They are the people who close a book and never think about it again. To them, the story ends at the words ‘The End’ and that’s that.

  Then there are the optimists. The story continues, but it stays the same. The princess lives happily ever after with her prince, probably pops out a few kids and carries on the bloodline. Marriages survive, families continue, and good prevails over evil. These are the people who cannot bear deviations from the rule. Everything fits into neat little boxes. When bad things happen, they ignore it, or use some quote about everything happening for a reason, or what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger. They carry on without even talking about their bad experiences, pretending everything is all right.

  Others wonder about the possibilities. Maybe the princess cheated on her prince with a dashing knight, ran away with him to live in the wilds, cheated on him with a neighbouring farmer and ended up working the fields for the rest of her life. These are the people who lie awake at night, frightened by the stars above them, intimidated by how the world keeps turning and it doesn’t matter if they live or die. These are the people who attempt to stop those thoughts by painting, or writing, or reading… anything to plug up that hole in the brain that gushes out a constant stream of consciousness.

  As Seth drives me back to the campsite, I see those thoughts in his eyes. He’s wondering where our story will end. Will it be at the hands of Amy? Will she have her revenge? Will it be when I leave for good? Or will it be when someone, somewhere, stops writing the story?

  It’s late. The sky is black-blue, but the rain has shifted away, leaving it clear enough to see stars and aeroplanes. Seth has his sleeves rolled up and I trace the line of swallows tattooed onto his forearms. After spending an evening eating, watching trash TV, and avoiding talking about our greatest fears, I feel like our story has just begun, but will end at the first chapter. I always knew it would be a holiday romance. And because I’ve always known that, I’ve fallen even harder.

  He pulls into the same car park where the young boy fell from the roof. When he turns off the engine, I realise it’s almost midnight.

  “Would you like me to walk you to your van?” he asks.

  I shake my head. “I’ll be fine.”

  He leans forward and kisses me. It has been a mere few hours since our first kiss, yet already this feels like the familiar, slow kiss, you get after being with someone for months.

  When we break away, he runs his fingers through my hair. “Mary, this evening has been—”

  “Don’t say it.” A sudden burning of tears pricks at my eyeballs. It’s all been so intense, from the hospital, to Seth’s house, to now. “I’m so glad you took me to see your mum. I’m sorry that—”

  “Don’t say it,” he says.

  “I wish I could help.”

  His hand falls into his lap.

  “There is something I can help with, though,” I say. “Come with us, to meet Igor. We can stop Amy together.”

  “Okay,” he says, his voice devoid of emotion.

  “At the risk of sounding corny, I think you’re going to have to really believe it to make it happen,” I say. “If you give up, if you don’t try, Amy will win.”

  “That does sound corny.” He entwines his fingers with mine and lets out a chuckle. “Are you Peter Pan, now?”

  “No, but I think we control our own destinies. I believe in us and our own minds. We can make things happen if we believe in ourselves,” I say.

  “Ahh,” he replies. “That’s the psychology A-Level talking.”

  I hit him lightly on the shoulder. “It’s me talking. And, maybe, a little bit my dad talking. He’s right, though. It’s like when a little kid bumps his knee. If you rush over and fuss over the kid, he keeps crying and crying. If you act like it’s no big deal and distract him with a teddy bear, he’ll start laughing and chew on its ear. The mind is powerful. The way we perceive things changes the outcomes of our actions. So if you believe you will live to be twenty-two, you will. Tell me you believe.”

  He smiles and runs a thumb along my cheekbone. “All right, I believe—smart-arse.”

  “Good,” I say. “It’s going to be fine, you’ll see. We won’t let Amy win.”

  “Mary, Amy won’t win. She never won in the first place. She’s the only one of us who has truly lost. Everything.” His smile fades and he drops his hand into his lap.

  I should have realised the weight he carries. It isn’t some romanticised moping about his fortune-telling, it’s the weight of knowledge from watching his father’s crime.

  “You can’t carry his guilt,” I say.

  Seth looks at me sharply. His brown eyes glisten in the dim light inside the car. Moonlight and flood lights filter through the car windows, but still half of his face is cast in shadow.

  “Who else will carry it?” he says.

  We kiss, then. I sink into it, cherish it. Later, as I lie in the tiny bed inside our caravan, I replay the exact same conversation in my mind. Should Seth feel guilty for Amy’s death? Should I be in this relationship with him? And lastly, what will happen when I leave Nettleby?

  *

  I wake up to find Lacey sitting cross-legged at the end of my bed, picking at her sleeves. She doesn’t say anything and neither do I, not for at least a few seconds. Even after I rub the sleep from my eyes and sit up, I somehow can’t find the words.

  Eventually, she looks up. “I shouldn’t have said those things.”

  “Did you mean them?”

  She shakes her head. “No, I never did.”

  “You don’t think I should be with Seth.”

  “Because I’m worried about you,” she says, her voice rising.

  I remain talking in a whisper. My parents can’t hear ghosts, but they can hear me. “Well, I’m worried about you, too.”

  A line deepens between her eyebrows. “You are?”

  “Of course I am.” I lean towards her, closing the gap between us. “You’re my best friend, Lace. You’ve not been yourself, recently.”

  Her face falls. “I haven’t?”

  “You seem out of sorts.”

  “Well maybe that’s because I’m dead,” she snaps. There’s a long silence and Lacey continues to play with the sleeves of her hoody. Each time she pulls a thread from the cuff, it repairs itself, returning back to the exact same state as before. “It’s things like that, isn’t it?”

  I nod.

  She drags her hands through her hair. “I don’t want to end up like her, Mares. I don’t want to be some murderous revenge ghost, preying on innocent kids.”

  “Okay, I’m going to say something and I don’t want you to get mad. But do you think it’s time for you to… move on?”

  Her face pales and I hear thick emotion in her throat when she says, “You want to get rid of me?”

  I try to hold her hands, forgetting—again—that I can’t. “No, I don’t I really don’t. I’m scared that I’m being too selfish, that I’m keeping you here when you shouldn’t be.”

  “But I don’t want to go,” she says. “I don’t want to leave you.”

  The words feel like having a bowling ball pressed on top of my chest. “I don’t want to be the only reason you stay here, Lace. It�
��s too much…” I sigh. “I just want you to be happy. You could be at peace, right now.”

  “Or I could be rotting in my corpse body. Or I could cease to exist. I could fly around as some particle in the shitting wind. We don’t know. It’s all right for you to sit there and tell me what I should and shouldn’t do, but it’s not your decision. It’s mine. I choose to stay here and you can’t stop me.” She juts out her chin and a crackle of electricity flickers through her.

  “Then I support you. I’m with you.”

  Lacey shuffles against the bed. “But you said—”

  “I want you to be happy.”

  She catapults herself at me, and before I know it, a freezing chill and an electric shock ripple through my body. Lacey fades and then appears back at the end of the bed.

  “Sorry,” she says. “Forgot again.”

  “Maybe we can hover-hug,” I suggest.

  The two of us lean forward and hug without touching. The hairs rise on my arms and the back of my neck from the chill.

  My bedroom door opens and Mum appears in the doorway. I pull away from Lacey and put my hands by my side.

  She narrows her eyes a little but says in a very calm voice, “Are you all right, Mary?”

  I nod.

  “I thought I heard you talking to someone?”

  “I was on the phone to Seth,” I say.

  Her face brightens at the sound of his name. “Oh, did you go out with him last night?”

  My mind jumps to an image of Seth, half-naked, feeding me jam on toast on his sofa. “Yeah, we went to the pub with Neil.” It’s only half a lie.

  “That’s great.”

  I know that to her, me having a boyfriend and a friend is like some sort of validation that I’m okay. She needs those validations more than I do. I guess that’s what happens when you’re responsible for a human being; you begin to obsess over any tiny signal and what it might mean. How else do you know if you’re doing a good job?

  As she tells me about the singer they went to see last night—apparently she was a Celine Dion impersonator called Selene Dior—I turn back to Lacey and we share a smile.

  *

  “Is this the right place?” Lemarr asks. “Because this doesn’t look much like the house of some spooky ghost hunter.”

  I check the address written on the business card. “Yep. This is it.”

  We’ve reached a yellow door in a sea of terraced houses. It took thirty minutes to walk to the village from the campsite, and another five to find Igor’s road, which is tucked away behind the main shopping street.

  Like all of the houses in Nettleby, there are hanging baskets over the front door and potted plants underneath the window. Neil raps the door knocker three times.

  On my right, Seth’s fingers graze mine, sending electric shocks up and down my wrist. On my left, Lacey’s ghost form gives me a chill, creating goosebumps along my forearm. I’m stuck between a doomed man and a ghost.

  A shuffling noise comes from inside the house. After a man sighs on the other side of the door, a lock turns. Igor stands in the doorway, hatless and greying. He moves back into the hallway and ushers us in.

  “You’ve brought the ghost with you, then,” he says matter-of-factly, finding my eyes. “I can feel her presence.”

  Lacey moves closer to Igor and pretends to roar at him like a monster with her hands outstretched. I can’t keep the smile from my face.

  “Tell her if she keeps getting that close I’ll have to put an extra jacket on.” Igor rubs the thin cotton of his white shirt.

  Igor shuts the door and turns the key in the lock. We’re three teenagers, a young man, a ghost and a middle-aged man, cramped up in the hallway of a small terraced house. Igor gives Lemarr and Seth a dubious glance.

  “I didn’t say owt about newcomers,” he grumbles.

  “They’re cool,” I say. “They know the score.”

  Neil gives me a funny look. “We’re not meeting with the mob.”

  I shrug in reply.

  “Bloody kids.” Igor pushes past us and we follow him into the kitchen, all the time he mumbles swear words under his breath. “Yer don’t take nothing seriously, that’s your problem. Kids today. D’yer not know that this is a matter of life or death? D’yer not know that?” He shakes his head. “Get in here.”

  His kitchen is as quaint as the potted plants outside the house. The wallpaper is patterned with pink roses on a vine. The laminate flooring imitates beige tiles with intricate borders. Even the cabinets are chintzy, with pretend white painted wood grain and porcelain knobs. A pink woollen tea cosy sits over a purple teapot. On the window sill, by the sink, I spot a framed photograph of Igor when he was younger, his hair neatly cut, his face absent of lines, and a pretty young woman on his arm.

  “Is that your wife?” I ask.

  “Was,” he replies, without even looking in my direction.

  “Oh, I’m sorry.” Things make more sense now. Igor’s obsession with ghosts, his pink floral kitchen…

  “Listen, you lot, d’yer want to catch this ghost or what?” Igor glares at us all. Then he narrows his eyes at Seth. “’Ere, you’re the Lockwood lad, in’t yer?”

  Seth nods.

  “You knew Amy Willis,” Igor continues. “Went to school with yer cousins, didn’t she?”

  “That’s right,” Seth says. He moves a little closer to me. I sense his need for support and take his hand in mine.

  “What are yer doing with this lot then? These out-of-towners?”

  “It’s a long story,” Seth says. He adds a hollow laugh, aiming for easy and natural, but giving off creepy.

  Igor folds his arms. “I’ve got all night, lad. If you don’t tell me, I’m not helping you get this ghost.”

  “You don’t have to say anything—” I start.

  “It was my dad,” Seth says. “He killed her. My dad killed her.”

  Igor falls back into a chair near the kitchen table. “No. No, it wasn’t.”

  “I saw it with my own eyes.” Seth’s voice is sombre, quiet and commanding. The tops of his cheeks turn pink and his eyes flit from Igor, to his shoes, to me, and then to the rest of the group. I can’t even imagine what it must be like to admit you saw your own father kill an innocent child. I squeeze his hand.

  “I never… I thought… I knew him,” Igor stumbles through his words. His face is pale. Every trace of annoyance has been replaced with shock. “I saw him in The Nag’s Head. He was a right joker, always cracking everyone up. All this time. That case haunted me all this time, and it was him.”

  “It’s a big shock,” I say. “It has been for all of us.”

  Igor’s eyes flash. “You don’t know. Don’t tell me you know. This village has lived with that crime on its shoulders fer years. Don’t tell me you know what it’s been like, because yer don’t. You’ve been here less than a week, girl.”

  Seth squares his shoulders. “Hey. Don’t talk to her like that. She was nearly killed by Amy. She has a connection with Amy’s spirit. Of course she understands how difficult this has been.”

  Igor is suddenly on his feet. “And you were fifteen when that lass was killed. You’ve been covering up fer him all this time—”

  “He blocked it from his memory!” I interrupt. “The trauma stopped him remembering until his father’s funeral.”

  “How do you know that, eh?” Igor’s face moves towards mine. There’s spittle in the corner of his mouth and his words whistle through his old teeth. “How do you know they weren’t both in on it, or he did it himself?”

  Neil groans. “Don’t you think we haven’t already had this argument? You know who might tell us the truth? Amy. Did any of you think of that when you were sniping at each other?”

  Igor backs up. “The lad has a point.”

  I take a chance and approach the man. “Don’t you think there would be other murders since Amy? Who kills a child and then goes back to their normal life? Not sickos like Seth’s dad. He must have been a serial
killer.”

  Igor sucks in a long, whistling breath and looks up at the ceiling as though seeking divine inspiration. “All right. I’m coming with you to put Amy to rest. At least then we might get some answers, and I’m not letting a bunch of kids try to do it alone.” He gives Seth a hard glare. “First sign of trouble and the police are getting involved.”

  “All right.” Seth maintains Igor’s eye contact as the rest of us watch, shuffling our feet and clearing throats to break the tension.

  Igor nods once and then turns to the kitchen table. It’s there that, for the first time, I notice the array of strange equipment splayed out. Most of the pieces are strange contraptions, like a rectangular black box, a little like a large walkie-talkie. It has a meter that runs from green to red, and a thin indicator lever.

  “That’s an EMF reader,” Igor explains. “It detects changes in the electro-magnetic field.”

  I feel a cold chill as Lacey moves closer. “Tell him to turn it on, I want to see if it works.”

  “Turn it on,” I say.

  Igor flicks a switch and holds the reader up. Almost immediately the level moves straight into the red and it beeps. “There yer go. It’s picked up yer friend. Now, did any of you bring torches?”

  We exchange glances.

  “Umm, no,” Neil says. “Should we have?”

  “Doesn’t matter,” Igor pulls out torches from a black rucksack. “Got some.”

  “Where are we going that requires a torch?” Lemarr speaks up.

  “And why is there a very pointy-looking knife on the table?” Neil adds.

  Igor lifts the knife by the blade and flips it in the air to grasp the handle. It’s ornate. The blade is brushed steel and gleams at the edge. The hilt is black with intricate symbols etched into the metal. It looks more like a dagger, the kind you would see in films with a religious theme. The kind where monks commit heinous crimes in the name of Satan.

  “This isn’t a knife, it’s an Athamé. And the reason you need torches, is that we’re going ghost hunting. We’re going to send some unsuspecting ghost back to the afterlife.” Igor puts the dagger into a sheath at his hip.