Haunted Lancashire (The Haunting Of Books 1-3)

by Jack Lewis

  “What if Alt’s right?” she said.

  “What if he’s right?” said Jay, his voice getting louder and louder, his words ever so slightly slurred. “What if I start pissing gold? Listen to yourself. What’s more likely? That there have been a few accidents in our family, or that our bloodline is cursed, and now it’s passed onto us? Damn it, Mag. Get a grip. I didn’t expect this of you, of all people. Jesus Christ. How moronic do you want to be?”

  “There’s no need to be so mean about it. You’re about two words away from a broken nose,” said Mag, back to her old self. “You better chose them carefully.”

  A pause. Silence.

  “I’m sorry,” said Jay, finally.

  “Well chosen.”

  “Now what?”

  “We better go find Loe. And then…I don’t know. I really don’t.”

  So that was it, then. They’d made their choice, and they’d chosen not to believe him. Altair clutched the book in his hand, feeling strangely reassured by holding a tome written by his ancestral namesake.

  There was a way to end this. Everything he’d researched before coming here had led him to one, incontrovertible fact; that the curse couldn’t be stopped. It had claimed Dad, and now it had passed to his children. It couldn’t be stopped, reasoned with, or broken.

  But it could be fed. And a half-sister was still a sister, after all.

  *

  Loe kneeled as close to the vine door as she dared. She double-checked the things she’d used to prop it open. Two bricks that she’d pulled from the wall, and the stone she’d used before. As certain as she was that the door couldn’t swing shut, she still didn’t go into the room.

  She stared at the darkness of the cell. She willed her eyes to adjust to it, but it was impossible. It was as though this was a darkness brewed from another physical plane, like the essence of the blackest night mixed with the emptiness of space, concentrated in a room that should have been too tiny to hold it.

  She cursed Altair not just for locking her in there, but for taking the torch. Coward. When she caught up with him…

  Forget it for now.

  She stared at the cell, where she could feel the presence looking back at her. Clive threatened to resurface in her mind again, but she got a good grip on him. She already felt like he was weaker. After all, she’d already been trapped in the cell, in the darkness, and she’d come through it. What power did Clive have now?

  It was as she summoned up the courage to speak to the presence, that she realized something.

  All this time, she’d felt like a stranger here in Harrow Hall. That the house belonged to another family, that its history wasn’t hers.

  But if Altair was right - and the bastard always seemed to be right - then the girl in the painting, the girl they’d chained up down here, was related to Loe just as much as the rest of them.

  Her blood was Loe’s blood. They weren’t strangers.

  With that realization came a flood of empathy for the poor girl. Stronger than the empathy she’d felt when Altair told her about it, because this felt real.

  Now, she found the courage to speak.

  “Hello?” she said.

  The girl didn’t answer. Loe began to wonder if this was a good idea. She began to wonder all sorts of things besides that, too. Was this really happening? Could a forest really trap you? Had Altair really hit her? What damage had been done to her brain for it to allow her to accept this reality where she was talking to a ghost?

  But she didn’t back away, because backing away meant going back into the hall to face Alt and the others, and she was just one person and they were three.

  “Hello?”

  She saw a hand in the darkness. Just for a split second.

  A hand of pale flesh curling a finger at her. Come in.

  Yeah, right.

  She stood up, already having a change of heart. Whatever the hell this was, she’d rather face Alt, face someone of flesh and blood.

  The hand flashed again. She couldn’t see the body it belonged to, only the hand, as if that was all it was prepared to reveal. Was it a girl’s hand? It looked like it.

  The hand pointed at the right-most wall. Loe could see inside the cell now, as though the presence was lifting the darkness like it was a sheet, allowing her a peek at what was really there.

  She saw it point at the bricks just above the floor. Stretching out with a crooked finger, it tapped the bricks with its fingernail once, twice, three times, but without not making any sound.

  Was there something else hidden in the walls? Another book?

  Loe knew her choices. Give in to fear, and go surrender herself to Altair and the others. Not just to them, though. If she gave up, she was surrendering to her own mind, too.

  Or, she could try and be brave about this.

  She searched the ground around her, finding a small stone. She waited. The hand flashed again, a fist with one finger held up, curling toward its palm and beckoning her.

  Loe threw the stone and watched it pass right through the hand.

  As insane as it was, she felt strangely relieved. Whatever this was, it had barely any physical presence. From the way it kept flickering, disappearing, and then coming back, it couldn’t even manifest itself as a vision for longer than a few seconds.

  Real or not, this thing had no power.

  Checking the door, making sure her bricks and stones were still there to prop it open, Loe entered the cell again.

  Her brain screamed at her now. Get out! Get out!

  Remembering countless meditations, hours upon hours of mindfulness, she used her discipline to let her thoughts sail through her head and then away from her, not giving her fears any chance to grow.

  Using her keys, she chipped away at the cement around the bricks the finger had pointed to, freeing them enough to pull the bricks out completely. First one, then two. She placed these by the door, reinforcing her protection against it locking.

  She felt the presence near her once again. Watching her once again. It was clear that it wasn’t going to interfere with her, that it wanted to show her something.

  I need to stop saying ‘it’. She’s her. The girl. Not ‘it.’

  She found that thinking about the girl was reassuring, now that she had reconciled herself to the fact this was her ancestor and that she clearly harbored Loe no malice.

  Even so, all she found behind the first few bricks was an empty space. Darkness beyond the walls of the cell.

  She chipped away at the cement around a third brick, a fourth, a fifth. She felt her head pulse with an ache that grew stronger and stronger, which then mixed with nausea in her stomach and made it even worse.

  Her thoughts sailed through her mind. Dark ones that wanted to worry her.

  Concussion.

  Brain injuries.

  You’re haemorrhaging. All the way inside your head, blood is seeping out and into your brain.

  Though she knew concussion was a risk after getting the crap clubbed out of her, she also knew that these were intrusive thoughts created by a different part of her brain. She redoubled her efforts to let them sail on through her mind, to not feed them by giving them the attention they craved.

  By the time she was done, she had revealed a tunnel cut into the cell wall, just by the floor. It was barely large enough to crawl through. When she removed the bricks above it to try and make more room, all she saw was even more bricks behind them.

  “What are you showing me?” she asked.

  She got no spoken answer and no flash of ghostly fingers.

  Loe carefully put her hand in the tunnel and felt around, meeting nothing but cold air and the stone floor.

  There was nothing hidden inside, then. So that meant only one thing; she had to cross through the tunnel.

  God. Now she really felt sick.

  Did she go back, or try to squeeze through?

  If she went back, those bastards would be waiting for her. If she did nothing, they would eventually come d
own here for her.

  Wishing beyond anything that she had never even driven to Harrow Hall in the first place, Loe swallowed her fears, dropped to her belly, and began to crawl through the tunnel.

  Chapter Thirteen

  She didn’t know how long the tunnel really was, but it felt like miles. It was so small and cramped that even when she held her breath and made herself as small as possible, she felt the top of her head scrape against the stone.

  She couldn’t let herself think about it. If she dwelled on how damned narrow it was and what would happen if she got stuck halfway through it, then she was done. It’d be like walking a tightrope across a city skyline, then making the mistake of looking down.

  Eventually, the tunnel decided to stop punishing her, and it opened up into another room. Loe climbed out and was immediately hit by a spell of leg cramps so strong that she fell on her arse.

  After stretching the cramp out and then brushing the dust from her chest, chin, forehead, and hair, she got to her feet.

  She found herself in a room completely different from the cell. For one thing, although it was gloomy, her eyes began to adjust to it. She saw bookshelves lining each wall, along with a monster of a desk dominating the center of the room. The kind of desk that could only belong to either someone very important, or someone who believed themselves to be.

  There was a lamp on the desk, half-filled with oil. Checking the desk drawers, she found that one wouldn’t open, two were stuffed with papers, and the last was filled with various pens. Dozens and dozens of them of different sizes and colors. But among those pens was a matchbox, the scratch side almost worn away.

  “One match left. Great.”

  She took out the sole match. She waited for a second, trying to get a feel for any kind of breeze in the air, but there was nothing.

  “If you’re here,” she said to the ghostly presence, “thank you for showing me the tunnel. But please, please don’t float around when I strike this.”

  The match lit, there was no breeze to snuff it, and soon the oil in the lamp was burning and casting dim light over the room. Though it was barely stronger than a candle, it was something, especially after how long she’d spent in darkness now. It gave her a better view of the room.

  There were four bookshelves, one on each wall, that reached all the way up to the roof, and there was a door directly across from her. Not knowing where the door would lead to, Loe looked through the keyhole, but she could see nothing beyond it.

  She’d just have to stay quiet. For all she knew, the door might open near the living room, where Altair and the others would hear her.

  Then again, how could that be possible? She’d gotten here from the cell, and the cell was deep underneath Harrow Hall. This room had obviously been kept secret and was likely hidden far away from the rest of the house.

  As well as revealing the features of the room, the lamplight also showed her that she was alone. Then again, maybe the girl was here with her, content just to remain unseen and watch Loe from the shadows. If not, the poor girl was back in the cell, trapped there.

  Gratitude and pity welled inside her. “Are you there?” she said.

  No answer came back.

  Without knowing how long she could stay in this room undiscovered, she got to work. Looking around, there were no windows, no way out other than the tunnel and the door. Besides, this place was adjoined to the cell, so it must have been underground.

  Lacking an exit she could trust, she tried to arm herself. She looked for a poker, a bottle, anything that she could use to hit someone with. The best she found were the books on the shelves, some of which might be heavy enough to hurt if she smacked someone on the head. Not good enough.

  Next, she checked the desk itself. Three drawers were open, but after finding the matchbox in one, the others offered nothing of use.

  Then there was the fourth drawer. The locked one.

  Maybe there was a gun in there. Or a knife. Something.

  She pulled on the drawer, but it was too stubborn to open.

  She walked behind the desk and checked the back of the drawer, and then she got underneath it and checked the bottom. There was no hint of the locking mechanism.

  So she stood up. Looking at the books on the shelves, she wondered about something.

  There had to be hundreds, maybe even a thousand books in here. What were the chances that one of these books might be hollowed out, and that the desk key might be hidden inside?

  The chances are a thousand to one, idiot.

  Still, if she looked in each one…

  Screw that. I don’t have all night.

  She grabbed the heaviest book and then got back underneath the desk. Laying on her back with the bottom of the drawer facing her, she tapped it. The sound was hollower in the center of the drawer.

  Gripping the book, she drove it into the bottom of the drawer as hard as she could. The wood cracked but held firm. She smashed it again, this time splitting the drawer bottom enough that she could grip it and pull it apart piece by piece.

  So much for fancy locks.

  She broke parts of the wood away until she’d created an opening big enough for her to take out what was inside.

  It wasn’t a gun, a knife, or anything useful like that.

  “Another god damn book,” she said.

  She put the book on the desk. The cover was made of leather. Or if not leather, then definitely some kind of animal hide. It even smelled bestial, in a weird way. Like dried beef jerky.

  With the lamp flickering, the oil burning, she opened the book.

  “What the hell?”

  yes yes yes yes yes yes yes

  yes yes yes yes yes yes yes

  yes yes yes yes yes yes yes

  yes yes yes yes yes yes yes

  yes yes yes yes yes yes yes

  yes yes yes yes yes yes yes

  yes yes yes yes yes yes yes

  yes yes yes yes yes yes yes

  The book had hundreds of pages, all of them filled with the word yes repeated over and over. Line after line, page after page packed with yes. Thousands and thousands of repetitions of the word.

  It was only at the end of the book, on the very last page, that there was any blank space. There, just two lines were blank.

  Deflated, Loe sat in the desk chair. She rested her elbows on it and felt overwhelming fatigue mixed with the pounding in her temples that had been constant since she woke up.

  She knew she was in trouble. Concussion could take a while to hit full force, but if she left it unchecked until it did, she was done. She had to find a way out of this place before then. She knew it could be hours, even days, before concussion really set in, but she couldn’t stay here a single minute longer than necessary. Brain injuries weren’t something to leave to chance.

  Her eyes began to droop. She felt her thoughts grow lighter, hazier.

  Can’t fall asleep…

  But how long had it been since she slept?

  Just ten minutes, then. I’ll think better if I’m rested.

  Wait, what am I doing? She snapped her eyes open. Judging by the oil in the lamp, she hadn’t fallen asleep.

  Nevertheless, something had changed. The air felt heavier, the room seemed different.

  Something is in here with me.

  Just like in the cell, she was certain that something shared the room with her. Not the girl. She couldn’t explain why, but she knew it wasn’t the girl.

  This was someone older. A man, maybe. Maybe not. But definitely older, definitely less kind.

  Was it hostile?

  Or was she imagining this whole thing?

  “Is someone there?” she said.

  No answer.

  A sudden movement in front of her drew her attention. When she looked down, she saw words scratching themselves into one of the blank lines in the book. The letters were charcoal black.

  YES

  A book full of yesses. Thousands upon thousands of repetitions of the word, all within
this animal-hide tome.

  And another yes in response to her question.

  “Who are you?”

  No answer.

  No words were written.

  Stupid. There are no other words in the book, just yes.

  “Will you answer my questions?”

  Nothing happened.

  She was wrong, then. Maybe she hadn’t seen the word being written; it had been there all along, and she was tired and hurt and just plain scared, and she needed some…

  YES

  There it was. A new yes, freshly written even as she stared at the paper.

  Something was here with her. Something that would answer her questions. Something that had answered questions before, thousands of them, to the old owner of the animal-hide book.

  There were just two blanks lines in the book. Judging by the size of the writing, those lines would fit only seven more yeses. Just seven more questions she could ask.

  She needed to think about what to ask. She had about a million questions, but she had to narrow them down to seven, and to ones that could only be answered yes. Not only that, but she needed to ask the questions that would tell her the most.

  There was something else to consider, too. If she asked a question and yes wasn’t written, then the answer must have been no. Or this presence, whoever it was, simply didn’t know the answer.

  This brought up a whole range of new problems. Who was the presence? Where was it from? The girl in the cell had perhaps lived in Harrow Hall hundreds of years ago. What about this presence? It might be so old that it wouldn’t understand her frames of reference.

  Okay, she needed to be careful about not wasting a question. What should she ask first?

  Am I in danger?

  Nope. She didn’t need a strange spirit to scribble the answer to that.

  First, she decided, she needed some hope.

  “Is there a way out of Harrow Hall woods that I’m capable of finding by myself?”

  There was no answer. Every second that the rest of the line stayed blank, she felt her hope diminish. If there was no way out of here, what was the point?

  She felt breath on her neck then. She jolted out of her chair and to her feet, catching the chair just before it toppled over. She turned in a circle, scanning the room.