“Start with the flats,” JinYeong said decidedly. “People who live next to each other know everything about the others.”
“Neighbours, then? All right. I never shared walls with anyone, so I wouldn’t know.”
It was a nice area, not far from the old brewery, and everything was old brick, even the flats. Next door to our right, an old double-story place slouched up against the brick of the flats, and maybe it was just a trick of the old timbers, but it really did look like it was slouching.
“Looks like it’s about to try to bum a smoke off the place next door,” I said under my breath. The house on the other side was a lot more respectable, but nowhere near as character-filled: one of those tidy new red brick things in a single story, with a bit of a jungle behind it that looked like it went behind the flats as well. Beyond that, I saw a fence rising high and battered, and the edge of an old tin shed roof behind that.
It wasn’t until we got up onto the covered veranda that I saw something that made me stop.
“Hang on, the number’s wrong,” I said in surprise. There was a big number five on the main doors.
JinYeong frowned at it and said, “It is that building, then,” pointing at the house next door to the flats.
“That one says nine,” I told him, craning my head around the pillars. I headed back across the patio and down the stairs to get a squiz at the house on the left, and eventually found a wooden number three hidden in the bushes on the last remnants of a fence pole.
“Where’s number seven, then?” I demanded. I glared at the house-fronts, as if that would do any good, and backtracked a bit more so that I could see a bit further over the back fence of the place on the left. To JinYeong, I said, “Oi. What’s the bet that there’s an old, mungery house hidden behind this lot with a number seven on the gate?”
JinYeong clicked his tongue. “Ah. I do not like this.”
“Yeah, it’s a bit Aussie gothic, isn’t it? Well, we might as well knock on a couple doors, anyway—we could try the flats that overlook the back, too.”
No one answered when we knocked at the first door, but I wasn’t really surprised. Not only was the garden overgrown and potentially imbued with a life of its own, but the door was rusted at the hinges and if the musty smell was anything to go by, no one had lived there for quite a while. We went on to the house on the right next, wary of the bow in the sunken wooden stairs, but no one answered there, either.
JinYeong gave a bit of a sniff and said distastefully, “Nothing here but mould.”
“Into the flats, then, I s’pose,” I said. “We’ll check around the block later. There’s gotta be another way in from around the back.”
An untidy office lady let us in when we buzzed at the main door; she didn’t seem surprised to hear that we were interested in the house behind the block of flats, and invited us to take a look from the stairwell windows further up before coming back down to her office on the first floor.
“Just make sure you blur my face out if you’re doing a video,” she said, which made me exchange a startled look with JinYeong.
“Maybe they get a few documentaries and ghost hunters?” I suggested, as we climbed the stairs to the second floor. The stairwell windows were big and bright, and at the second floor we had a good view into the narrow strip of concrete that passed for a backyard, and the little house I suspected to be number seven. You could see right into the windows if you tried; big, reflective things under awnings that gave them the look of heavy-lidded eyes that sometimes seemed to move with odd shadows.
We had a quick look along the corridor there, but the hall was cobwebby and looked unused, and the four units there, from seven through to ten, all looked distinctly dusty to me. We went onto the next floor.
From the third story, it was easy to see the layout of the area behind the block of flats, though not so easy to see what was happening in the actual courtyard of number seven. It was surrounded on all sides by older houses, and had snuggled itself into a courtyard overhung by verandas, trailing vines, and overgrown trees. The only way in or out seemed to be a thin lane that vanished into a barely-wider strip that ran between five and three and stopped just before the main road.
“Looks like us going back down to see the landlady,” I said gloomily. “The only places you can see in from are on the second floor, and it didn’t look like there was anyone there. Not much use trying to ask neighbours when there are none.”
We found the office door open for us when we got back down to the first floor. That office looked out toward the front, too, unlike the unused and padlocked office further down the main hall.
“Not many people on the second floor,” I said to the office lady, by way of starting the conversation.
“Nope,” she said. “Can’t sell or rent those flats for love or money. As soon as someone moves in, they move out: too much weirdness from the house behind. I thought that’s why you came here—you weren’t looking to rent, were you? It’s good, cheap rent for a couple just starting out.”
“Sorry,” I said. “We’re not looking right now. We just heard there was a bit of strangeness about the place behind, and look into that sort of thing. What sort of weirdness did you mean?”
She shrugged. “Screaming, ghost sightings, people with special equipment going in there to investigate paranormal events. There’s always some sort of a fuss going on. The last tenants from unit ten said they saw the house eat someone, and I had someone tell me that it tried to crawl into their flat.”
“Nice,” I said. “That’s all we need, houses that eat people and try to sneak through windows.”
“Tenants are skittish,” the woman said, “and normally I’d say they’re just getting overwrought about an old house, but I’ve seen a few things myself. I’d avoid the place, if I were you. I’m selling up as soon as I can.”
“Thanks,” I said. “That’s…useful, I s’pose.”
“If you haven’t got any more questions, I’m about to head out,” she said. She wasn’t rude, just matter of fact. “I don’t like to stay here for too long at a time; your mind starts playing tricks on you.”
“Nah, that should do it,” I said.
We were halfway out into the hall again when the office lady called out to us, “Wait! If you really want to talk to someone, there’s the old woman in number nine.”
“Thought you said seven to ten were all empty?” I said, stopping.
“All of ’em except that one,” she said. “The tenant’s a bit odd, but she doesn’t seem to mind whatever happens over in the next yard, so I kept her there. She might be able to help you a bit.”
So back upstairs we went. I wasn’t particularly hopeful, and JinYeong gave the barely-concealed impression of impatience, but it was our last shot.
“If this one doesn’t have anything to say other than that the house ate someone or tried to sneak in over the balcony, we might as well make a go of it by ourselves,” I said when we were outside the door of number nine.
“Ne,” said JinYeong. “This is boring.”
“Well, at least we’re not being eaten by a house,” I said cheerfully, as the door opened.
I’d been looking for someone at about eye height, so it took a couple of moments just staring at a yellow-papered wall in the distance before a very polite, very tiny ahem drew my eyes down to about chest level.
There was an old woman there, about as diminutive as her cough, and looking like the skinnier sister of Tweety Bird’s owner. White hair that nearly glowed, plump bun, cheerful apple-cheeked face—even the crafty, glittery little eyes.
“I don’t think you can really say eaten when it comes to a house, can you?” she asked, in a precise, warm little voice. “I always thought that consumed is more evocative in that case.”
“Hadn’t really thought about it before now, actually,” I said. “Sounds like you’ve given it a bit of thought.”
“I’ve lived here for twenty years,” she told me, as if that was an answer. Maybe
it was. “Are you here to talk about number seven? Do come in; I’m Vesper.”
JinYeong, who always likes a direct invitation, looked pleased and stepped inside as soon as Vesper took down the security chain. I couldn’t help thinking that if things were as scary as the office lady had made them seem, the chain might have been put to better use on the door of the patio that I could now see across the room.
“That’s exactly what we came for,” I told her. If she was willing to talk, there was no need to beat about the bush. I looked around the room curiously, all soft yellow wallpaper and fluffy cushions, and wondered how this obviously warm and pleasant woman had found herself alone in a flat opposite what was said to be a haunted house. I moved further into the room after JinYeong, and tipped my chin at the windows that faced number seven. “Bet you’ve seen some weird stuff, living across that place.”
“The world is full of oddness,” she said contentedly, shutting the door behind us. I don’t know exactly why, but I was relieved when she didn’t put the security chain back on the latch. “And sometimes a person discovers that the oddity is themselves.”
She looked at me with her sharp old eyes and added, “But that’s not what you came to hear from me, is it?”
I grinned. “I was hoping for some stories.”
“What sort of stories, dear?”
“Anything you think is important to know about number seven,” I said, shrugging. “Anything you want to tell us.”
“I suppose you’ll be wanting to get in there. People usually do.”
“First, stories,” JinYeong said. “After, we will go in.”
“How pleasant, for a change,” said Vesper happily. “The others would keep rushing in and we know what’s said about fools and rushing, don’t we? Dear, would you mind putting the kettle on? We might as well have tea and pound cake if we’re going to tell stories.”
“I knew we came to the right place!” I said, making a bee-line for the kitchen.
Vesper sorted out the cake and a teapot, which was nice from my perspective, and when we were all seated with a piece of raspberry poundcake and cup of tea—sorry, dears, I don’t have coffee, is that all right?—she said cheerfully, “Well, this is nice, isn’t it? What would you like to know first?”
“What kind of a house eats people?” I asked her at once.
JinYeong raised his brows at me, but Vesper poked him in the side of the thigh with a knitting needle that had just materialised in her hand and said, “Never beat around the bush, young man. At my age, I don’t have a lot of time.”
She began knitting in a businesslike sort of way and added, “What kind of a house eats people? Well, possibly it’s more important to consider what kind of people would deliberately go into the sort of house that’s said to eat people, isn’t it?”
“Either people who are trying to disprove that kind of thing, or people who are trying to prove it,” I said slowly. “You mean, the house doesn’t like being bothered?”
“I shouldn’t think the house cares about anything; it’s a house, you know.”
“Oh. Then what do you think is happening?”
“I’ve not the slightest idea, my dear. I can’t explain it at all.”
“You said you had some stories,” I prompted, trying not to grin. I didn’t want her to think I was laughing at her: I wasn’t, but it was hard not to grin at her slightly sideways way of talking. Maybe she’d spent too many years near something that was edged a bit too much between worlds.
“Indeed I did,” said Vesper, alternating double stitches in knit and purl. “Would you like to know about the ghost hunting team or the spectacled little man who visited from the Society for Debunking Ghostly Phenomenon?”
“Ghost hunting team,” I said. “We’ll get to the ghostly debunker afterward.”
“Very well,” she said, settling into her rhythm. “The ghost hunting team was three very nice young men with cameras: they told me they were doing a story on the deaths that had taken place in the house and the bad luck force it exerted on the whole neighbourhood.”
“Hang on, what deaths?”
“The ones that started it all,” Vesper said, knitting her way back across the row. “They were well documented at the time: deaths close by around the neighbourhood, deaths at the house itself—though no one ever found more than the body of the mother. They never found the boy.”
“Any of those deaths left hanging by the neck with the entrails out?”
I could have said it in a nicer way, but I wanted to see if I could shock her. She was so comfortable with the level of weird that she’d been experiencing over the last twenty years that it seemed if not suspicious, at least odd.
“Oh yes,” she said, with a sharp look at me. “Very untidy it was—right in front of the number seven’s windows. How did you know about that? They tried to hush it up at the time, apparently.”
“Well, how did your ghost hunters know about it?”
“They said something about a club they were in,” Vesper said, making me wonder if it would be an idea to suggest to Abigail that hers might not be the only group of rebel humans in existence around Tasmania.
“What happened to the ghost hunters, anyway?” I asked. “Were they the ones the house ate?”
“I saw them moving around on the first day,” she said. “Setting up lights and cameras, and plugging things into some sort of big engine they brought with them.”
A generator? I wondered. That would make sense.
“It hadn’t been dark for more than an hour when the yelling started. They were clever boys, bringing their own lights, but I’m not sure they thought further than illumination—it might have been wiser to think defence instead.”
“Sounds like it,” I muttered. “Right, so there was yelling—what about?”
“One of them screamed that the house had eaten Alex or Alan, but my hearing has never been the best. They tried to run for it with a camera each very shortly after that. One of them tried to get out by the lane but the trees got him, as I told you earlier, my dears. The other boy escaped into unit eight and…well…”
“That lady in the office downstairs said the house went into the unit,” said JinYeong, his eyes dark and thoughtful.
“I suppose it must have,” Vesper said meditatively, and for the first time, her knitting slowed. “I didn’t see much, of course; but the wallpaper on my side grew scarlet pimpernels for half an hour in that little damp patch over there.”
My eyes turned unconsciously toward the darker yellow patch of wallpaper for the briefest fraction of a moment, and then toward JinYeong. One of his brows was up, a small quirk that suggested he was trying to decide if this little old woman was dotty, or knew entirely too much.
It wouldn’t have been so hard to decide if she wasn’t so flamin’ calm about it all. If she’d seen all that she said she’d seen, what gave her the confidence to stay where she was and knit?
“There were tenants in number eight at that time,” Vesper added, knitting steadily. “They weren’t big knitters, so they were inclined to get a bit flustered when odd things happened: it gives your hands something to do, you see.”
“What happened to the people in number eight?”
“They moved out that night, of course. There’s still a few of their things in there, I fancy; they left in quite a hurry.”
“Reckon I’d be thinking about moving if my house got taken over by someone else’s house,” I opined. I found that JinYeong was watching me, and gave him the smallest of nods to let him know that of course I’d recognised the similarities between what had happened when I went to stay with Morgana and the story we were hearing. My house had followed me right into Morgana’s—a circumstance that left me pretty flamin’ sure that whatever JinYeong and I would meet with when we visited the Standforth house, the Standforths themselves were probably going to be one of those things.
“The investigations man, now that was an interesting one,” continued Vesper. “He didn’t t
ake in a lot of equipment, but he had a better idea of self-preservation, at least: a very nice little sword-cane, if I wasn’t mistaken. I’ve only ever seen two others, but I’m quite sure it was one of them. He also had one of those very small cameras strapped to his head. He didn’t run out screaming, but he did make a very valiant effort to get to his car before the shadows got him. That was back when people could still get through the gate.”
“Flamin’ heck,” I said, impressed with the placidity with which she said it. Maybe it really was the knitting.
“I still see him every now and then: such an eager, earnest little man, I thought. I never did get to see the documentary those three young men were putting together, though.”
Well, at least the bloke got out all right after all that, I thought, in some relief. I put down my empty teacup and wandered over toward the window. Over my shoulder, I asked Vesper, “You got any tips for getting in?”
“A little determination seems to go a long way when it comes to that,” she said, peering at me over her spectacles.
“Looks like the gate’s locked now, though,” I said, turning to look back down into the courtyard below. “Even if the trees don’t go after us.”
Vesper gave a very small, lady-like sigh. “You’re really going in, then?”
“Gotta,” I said. “There might be someone in there that we need to talk to. Don’t worry about us. We’re pretty indigestible.”
“If you’re sure, my dear,” she said, fixing me with a disapproving look. “Your young man does seem a little too decorative to be taking into a place like that.”
JinYeong, very surprised, said, “Mwoh?” and I couldn’t help the gratified chuckle that escaped me.
“That’s what I keep telling him!” I said. “But he keeps wearing his good stuff when we’re going out to work. Serves him right if he gets his pretty things ruined.”
“It’s his pretty face I was worried about,” said Vesper.
JinYeong, who looked as though he couldn’t decide whether to be gratified at the praise of his looks or insulted at her appraisal of his ability to handle himself in trouble, said, “I am able to protect my face.”
Between Cases (The City Between Book 7) Page 17
