Haunted Lancashire (The Haunting Of Books 1-3)

by Jack Lewis

  She’d need to decide what to do about Trev. He’d lied to her in the past, but always with good reason. Little lies, like hiding a bill that they couldn’t pay so that she wouldn’t worry, then paying it when he had the money.

  Maybe that was the price of family. Accepting the little lies that were told to keep you safe. After all, everyone lied, didn’t they? Back in their flat, when Trev would ask if she was happy, she’d say yes. There was no use admitting that she felt full of dread and that she was scared. Terrified of the past, and the future, and feeling a sense of anxiety about the present. Little fibs told to keep everything ticking over.

  No. She couldn’t just let this one go. She had to confront him. This wasn’t a lie told to keep them safe. It was a deceitful one. Why lie about a phone? And who was ‘B’?

  She went upstairs and got into bed. Despite her heart racing, she found that after a few minutes, sleep finally tugged on her eyelids. Just as the room began to fade around her, she remembered something.

  It was a memory from years ago before Jane died. She remembered waking up to hear her mum shouting something. She got out of bed and went out into the hall. She found both her parents in Jane’s room. They crowded around her sister’s bed, but Scarlett couldn’t see beyond them.

  She felt sick. A sensation of dread crawled over her nightwear and snuck inside and made her skin cold. Even without seeing anything, she knew something was wrong.

  When she walked into the room, her suspicions were confirmed. It was written all over her parents’ faces. Her mum’s face was white, and she was leaning over the bed and saying Jane’s name. Her father had his arms crossed and was fighting to keep his expression blank, though Scarlett saw through his fake control.

  Seeing her parents like that made her uneasy, and she wanted to turn and run to her own room and get under the covers. There was nothing worse than seeing your parents looking worried.

  She had to see for herself, though. She was too worried about Jane to ignore it. She walked forward, her feet padding on the floorboards and making them creak.

  She looked at her little sister, and she saw that she had marks all over her arms and legs.

  “He’s marked her,” said Dad.

  The words were so strange. So out of character.

  “He’s marked her,” answered Mum.

  And then they joined together as a chorus.

  “He’s marked her…he’s marked her…he’s marked her.”

  She put her hands to her ears and begged them to stop. It was only when Jane bolted up in bed, that Scarlett took her hands away.

  Jane looked beyond her parents, stared at Scarlett, and then screamed. It was the most agonising, pain-filled scream she’d ever heard. It seemed like it would go on for hours and hours. Until the windows broke and Scarlett’s ears burst.

  And then Scarlett sat upright. She was an adult again. She was in bed. Sweat covered her forehead, and she realised it wasn’t a memory, but a dream. That her sister hadn’t woken up covered in scratches.

  Next to her, there was a space where Trev had been. The bedsheets were still warm, though the covers were turned back so that a double layer covered Scarlett. Despite the insulation, she felt cold. There was a strange sensation on her skin, as though someone had stroked up and down her arms with their fingertips.

  Her skin started to burn. It was a dull pain, like the sting of a flame that had long ago been taken away but had left its mark. Something was on her. Scratched into her.

  She got up and ran out to the hall and into the bathroom. Breathing rapidly, she clicked on the light. It took her a second to work up the courage to look into the mirror.

  Finally, she did.

  There was no mark on her skin, nothing on her arms or her chest. It was the house again. It was getting to her, taking her imagination for a ride down a lonely road.

  “Mum?” said a voice behind her.

  She turned around to see Ruby in the doorway. She lifted her little fingers to her eyes and rubbed the sleep out of them.

  Scarlett gasped.

  When Ruby stepped into the light, she saw that there was a long, deep scratch on her daughter’s neck.

  Chapter Nineteen

  She wet a paper towel and pressed it against Ruby’s skin. The girl winced, though Scarlett didn’t know whether it was through pain or the coldness of the water. She suddenly had the urge to hold her daughter close to her.

  “What happened, Ruby? I need you to think.”

  “I dunno, Mum. I just woke up like this.”

  “You didn’t see anyone come into your room at night?” She shuddered. It was the last question a parent ever wanted to ask.

  She heard footsteps from beyond the room. They travelled down the hallway until finally making their way into the bathroom. It was Trev. He smiled at Scarlett and unzipped his coat. Then he looked at Ruby, and the smile disappeared.

  “What’s going on?” he said.

  “Show him,” said Scarlett.

  Trev kneeled so he was eye-level with Ruby. He reached out with his finger and gently touched the scratch on her neck. It was thick and red, like a vein that had burst against her skin.

  “There’s no way she did this herself,” he said. “The mark is too big.” Then he looked at Scarlett strangely.

  “You better not be thinking of asking me a stupid question,” said Scarlett.

  He put his hand to his head. He stood up. “I just don’t understand. We better phone the police.”

  “Why?” asked Ruby.

  Scarlett stared at him. “Why don’t you use your phone?” she said.

  For a second, he lost his cool. She saw it; the arching of his eyebrow, his lip moving. Then he gathered himself, and he crossed his arms in front of him. “What phone?”

  Ruby started tugging at Scarlett’s leg.

  “Stop it please, honey,” said Scarlett. “Can you go and play in your room for a minute?”

  Ruby sighed, then clomped out of the room and to the bedroom. For a second, she wanted to reach out and grab her and stop her from leaving. This morning, of all times, she didn’t want to leave Ruby alone. But this needed sorting.

  “You told me you sold your phone,” she said.

  He reached out to put his hand on her shoulder, but she moved back. “I did, Scar. What’s going on?”

  “I heard it ring. It was in your jeans pocket. Someone called ‘B’ was ringing you.”

  He let out a nervous laugh. “Come on. ‘B?’ Who’s that, a secret agent? Come here. Look.”

  With that, he left the bathroom and walked into their bedroom. With no other option, Scarlett followed him. Once there, Trev picked up the jeans that he had worn yesterday. He turned them over and shook them, his eyes wide in an exaggerated look of effort.

  “See? Nothing.”

  Coins spilt out onto the floor and rolled over the floorboards. His wallet landed on the wood with a thud. As much as he shook them, no phone fell out.

  He could have moved it, of course, but where? And if she thought about it, did she really want to know? Now, of all times, when she was back in Gawthorpe with all sorts of things happening?

  They had to stick together. Besides, what if she was wrong? She’d seen things before; the face in the mirror, the figure in the window. This was different because she’d actually felt his phone. She was sure of it.

  No. She couldn’t deal with this yet. Maybe when they finally left Gawthorpe and things weren’t so crazy, but for now, it was all she could do to keep it together.

  “So, should I call the police?” said Trev. Then he added, “On the landline?”

  “No. It’s a scratch, and she probably did it herself. I’m just letting things get on top of me.”

  Chapter Twenty

  Daylight came. Then, in a blink, it seemed to slip away from her. The hours went by, sucked away by the darkness of the walls of Gawthorpe. They disappeared amongst its rotting timber and cold stone. Before she knew it, she was in bed next to Trev, and it
was night again.

  She tried to sleep, but couldn’t. Something always dragged her back from the brink. The more exhausted she felt, the harder it had to drag her, until she felt like she was digging her fingernails in and begging for slumber, only for the force to pull so hard that her nails snapped and pain throbbed in her fingertips.

  It was only when the moon disappeared under a grey cloud and the house stopped its noises of settling, that her eyes properly closed, and she slept.

  She awoke to the sound of screaming.

  Her forehead was cool, but all the same, it was coated in sweat. She bolted up. At first, in the dim recesses of tiredness, she thought the noise was a nightmare slowly fading away. An echo sounding out in her mind.

  Then she heard it again, and she knew it was real. Her daughter was screaming.

  Without thinking to wake Trev, she got out of bed. The floorboards felt rough on her bare feet. She ran across then, into the hall and then to Ruby’s room. She flicked the light switch, but it didn’t work.

  She stopped. Something felt different. There was someone else here with them.

  She almost backed away, but the sheer foolishness of leaving her daughter stopped her. She wasn’t that person. She’d die for this girl. As she walked to Ruby’s bed, she stopped.

  Something shifted in the room. Weight creeping from one floorboard to the next. She looked around, but in the darkness, she saw nothing. But she was sure of it.

  “Wicked child,” said a voice. At once sudden and horrible. Enough to make her jump.

  A shudder ran through her. The voice wasn’t her daughter’s.

  It was low and mean, a horrible sound. A cruel voice, the tones dripping with anger and pain and darkness.

  Adrenaline shot through. She leaned toward the bed and scrabbled to pick up Ruby, but her hands hit the mattress. She felt around, but the bed was empty.

  Her eyes adjusted to the darkness. Ruby wasn’t in her room. Her bedsheets were pulled back over the bed, and the mattress bore the creases of hours of tossing and turning. Marbles lay on the floor like traps, ready to roll under an unsuspecting foot and send a person flying.

  “Ruby?” she said. She felt like she’d spent a lot of time in Gawthorpe shouting her daughter’s name.

  No answer. A shock of panic hit her chest. Where was she?

  Then an answer. “Mum!”

  It came from the hall. Taking one last look at the room, there didn’t seem to be a sign of anything untoward. So why was Ruby out of bed?

  “Mum!”

  A sense of urgency made her move. The adrenaline flushed through her, shaking away the last vestiges of tiredness. She felt so wired she might never sleep again. Her hands were shaky, as though the caffeine from a dozen espressos shot through her.

  The hall was dark. She flicked the switch. Predictably, nothing happened but a clicking sound as she waggled the plastic back and forth. She took a breath, sucked in the darkness, stared into the pitch black in front of her, and she knew she’d have to walk into it.

  She realised now why she used to hold her pee for hours when she was a kid. The halls of Gawthorpe were not a place to be at night. During the day they were cramped but at night, hidden by darkness, they seemed cavernous. It was as if the roof stretched up for twenty feet, and the hall ran in an endless tunnel.

  As she walked, she glanced into her room. Trev was asleep. No sign of her daughter.

  “Ruby?”

  “Mum? Over here.”

  Where had the voice come from? “Ruby?” she said. “Come to me.”

  No answer. No clue as to where her daughter was. She looked at the hallway ahead. A thought hit her. ‘Not the metal door. Anywhere but there.’

  All the same, she knew that’s where she’d be. There was something inevitable about it. For whatever reason, the room had always been an irresistible draw.

  Scarlett would never go near it as a girl, but Jane used to sneak up to it and put her ear against the keyhole. She’d stay there for up to an hour sometimes, slouched down next to the metal, ear against the keyhole as if it was whispering secrets to her. The image of her little sister leaning against the door and listening through the keyhole had always terrified her.

  ‘Our little sleepwalker,” Dad would say. ‘Why don’t you do something useful when you sleepwalk, and make me a coffee? Clean the living room?’

  Was Ruby a sleepwalker too? Scarlett tried to think. She couldn’t remember her doing it before, but there was always a chance she’d slept through it.

  Steeling herself, she put one foot in front of the other, her toes touching the cold hall floor, and walked toward the metal door. She heard something. A faint breeze. Whispering?

  Something grabbed her hand.

  She flinched and moved away. Her breath left her all at once, but she turned to face whatever it was.

  It was Ruby. She ran her hand through her hair and almost slumped down to the floor. Walking in the halls at night had sent another shot of adrenaline through her, but she felt like crashing all the same.

  Ruby was standing in the doorway of the sewing room. Everything was as it had always been. The sheet was fastened next to the window on the opposite side of the room. The cloud had left and the moon was three-quarters visible now, yet it only sent a weak light into the room. Most of it was filled with shadows.

  “I heard someone walking around in here,” said Ruby.

  Scarlett stepped into the doorway. The light switch was on her right, next to the door. She shrugged. It was worth a shot. She flicked it.

  The room lit up. It was too bright at first, an assault on her eyes after she’d just gotten accustomed to the darkness. It lit up a couple of sewing machines that were on the floor. A box full of threads and spools, with a long red ribbon streaming out of it like a river of blood.

  Hadn’t this room been empty? Wasn’t it all packed away? She couldn’t be sure. Looking around, it was how she’d remembered it from her youth. Reels of thread everywhere, discarded fabric on the floor.

  The mannequin in the corner which Mum would use to see how her latest creations looked. Right now, it was covered by a sheet, which was just as well. Jane had once climbed on a stool and drawn on its face in permanent marker, and it looked ridiculous.

  She started to feel nostalgic for a second. Then she shook it away. She put her hand on Ruby’s head and gave it a rub.

  “Bedtime, kiddo. There’s nothing here.”

  She flicked the light switch, burying the sewing machines and spools in darkness. She was about to leave when she saw something. She stood still.

  “You okay, Mum?”

  It was in the corner of the room. A figure. Five feet tall, thin. It stood there and watched her.

  She flicked the switch. It was the mannequin, but it was six feet in height, and its head faced toward the window.

  “Come on, then. I need to sleep and get my head together,” she said.

  She turned the light off. She gasped. The figure was back. Five feet tall. Closer this time, as though it had taken a step toward her.

  She flicked the switch, lighting up the room.

  “Just wait here a sec,” she told Ruby.

  The moon was covered by a cloud now. The window frame rattled as a breeze hit it, and Scarlett swore she could feel it tease on her skin.

  “What’s wrong, Mum?”

  “Just wait here.”

  She walked forward. Her steps were slow as if something were trying to hold her back. The clouds outside the window drifted, and the moon was smothered completely.

  Despite the light, she found she was nervous to cross the room. She forced herself on until she stood in front of the mannequin. It was as tall as her now, covered by what was once a bedsheet.

  She needed to look at it. With the light off, it had changed. She was sure of it. She needed to know that in the lightbulb glow, where she could see it, it was still the same stupid mannequin that had always been here.

  She reached forward. Her heart p
ounded. The window frame rattled. She grabbed the sheet, holding it between her thumb and index finger first, but then grabbing it with her whole hand. She forced herself to stare at it.

  And then she pulled.

  When she whipped away the sheet, a cloud of dust filled the air. She coughed and stepped back. And then she saw it.