The Shadows Call Page 14

  I grabbed for my clothing. It was only after scrabbling around that I recalled my jeans and boxer shorts had been discarded at the foot of the settee in the parlour. No way was I prepared to face a burglar with my balls swinging; I went to the pile of laundry I was yet to place in the walk-in wardrobe. I wriggled into a pair of paint splattered jogging pants, even as Sarah pulled on her sweater. I found her a pair of clean boxers and she yanked them up.

  ‘Phone the police,’ Sarah said.

  It was a sound strategy but for one thing.

  ‘My phone’s downstairs.’

  ‘So is mine,’ Sarah moaned.

  As far as weapons went, I could see nothing to use. A tremor of fear went through me. Burglars often carried the tools of their trade: a screwdriver, a hammer, a crowbar, sometimes even a knife. I had no wish to meet a desperate thief with only my bare hands. I grabbed the lamp, unplugged it. If we were faced with no other option, I’d throw the damn thing at the burglar’s head.

  ‘Wait here,’ I told Sarah.

  ‘Like hell! I’m not staying here on my own.’

  She was probably right. If I got in a tangle with a burglar I’d need her to run to our phones and get the police there ASAP.

  ‘OK. But stay behind me.’

  ‘Don’t worry about that.’ Sarah tucked in, holding onto my waist with her left hand. She’d bunched the knuckles of her right.

  Bang! Bump! Bang!

  ‘Holy shit!’ I wheezed.

  The bangs and crashes sounded as if they were emanating up the narrow stairwell. I flicked on the hall light and peered down. The door at the bottom was shut. I couldn’t tell by the angle, because the stairs twisted left and met the facing wall. But it was inky dark, with no light spill from the landing below. I remembered leaving the doors open from the spare rooms on the first floor when we’d been progressing from one to the next on our EVP hunt. The streetlamps outside should have cast enough light to leak into the stairwell. I didn’t recall shutting the door on the way up. I was too busy watching Sarah’s bum and other delights as I’d followed her up to the bedroom. Maybe I closed it on autopilot. Could have. But I didn’t think so.

  ‘I think they’re on the first floor,’ I whispered.

  As if to confirm it there was another loud bang, and it did sound as if it came from just beyond the closed door. We came to a halt on the stairs. Sarah’s breath was hot on the back of my neck. I juggled the lamp, preparing for a throw if someone suddenly entered the stairwell.

  ‘We don’t want to get trapped up here.’ Sarah’s voice was equally faint.

  We went down again, one slow step at a time. Where the final few stairs turned towards the door, I halted and Sarah bumped against me. She took a firmer grip on my waistline. I peered back at her. My lips were taut, and I attempted to hide my trepidation by asking if she was OK. Diverting my fear on her. She nodded, gave me a gentle shove forward. I held my breath as I took the door handle in my free hand. Counted to three.

  Bash!

  I flinched from the door, nearly falling on Sarah. She yelped. Once I’d worried that she might think I was a coward, and I wasn’t doing much to change her mind now. The thought galvanised me to action. I grabbed the handle, yanked it open and threw back the door. I jumped out on to the landing.

  ‘Hiiyyaaaa!’ I yelled, my best Bruce Lee impression. I hefted the lamp, prepared to crown anybody in throwing distance. I searched everywhere at once, eyes darting.

  The landing was empty.

  Bang, bang, bang, bang-bang!

  The racket came like a drumroll.

  But not from the first floor, it came from downstairs.

  At least, that’s what I thought.

  I indicated to Sarah that we should check and she nodded in agreement. Then I held up a finger. I’d stored my tools in the first floor junk closet. We quickly grabbed a hammer for me, and a chisel for Sarah. I’m not sure either of us would have enough moral outrage to physically use them as weapons, but it made us look more formidable. I left the lamp behind, a little more comfortable now that I appeared to mean business. We padded along the hall barefooted, and I was glad I’d had the foresight to knock in the protruding nail heads. Once more, I avoided looking at the stained glass window, going down quickly to the bathroom landing. From there we could see down into the ground floor vestibule. There was no one to be seen, but we could both hear the continued banging. Sarah was the first to look back the way we’d just come, but we’d already ascertained that there was nobody there.

  I pointed the hammer downwards.

  ‘It sounds as if it’s coming from the basement,’ I whispered.

  Sarah frowned. Shook her head.

  I set off down the stairs anyway.

  At the bottom I switched on the lights. The front door was firmly closed. Twisting to look the other way, the back door into the yard was also shut. The bolts were thrown over: no way had anyone entered by that entrance. Positioning myself so I could guard her, I watched while Sarah rushed for the parlour. She paused briefly in the wedged open doorway, then nipped inside, fetching her mobile.

  ‘Nobody there,’ she said by way of greeting on her return. She was holding her phone poised for action, but hadn’t yet called for help.

  ‘Don’t ring the cops yet,’ I said.

  The banging had stopped.

  ‘Do you think they heard us and left?’ Sarah wondered, her voice still barely above a whisper.

  ‘It’d be best if they have,’ I said, ‘but we should still check the other rooms.’

  We did so, a quick glance in the kitchen and the living room. That left the basement, and to be honest, I wasn’t looking forward to going down. I’d since replaced the hatch with sturdier tin sheet and timber, and was confident that nobody could have got in via the coal chute. Then again, the racket they’d been making, they might just have.

  We edged towards the entrance to the basement.

  As a temporary measure, I’d set a large sheet of plywood up against the wall, blocking the hole I’d smashed through the plasterboard. I’d used a pile of loose bricks I found in the back yard to prop it up. The plyboard hadn’t been disturbed. Just about to jostle it aside, Sarah halted me.

  ‘Listen,’ she said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Shhh.’

  We listened.

  Bang!

  The noise didn’t come from below but above us.

  ‘Bloody hell, what’s going on around here?’ I demanded.

  ‘I thought the noise was coming from up there. It’s hard to tell in this old place. The acoustics are crazy.’

  Returning to the bottom of the stairs, I peered up. From that angle I could just see the edge of the bathroom door and a portion of the stained glass. We hadn’t checked the bathroom for interlopers.

  ‘Do you want to stay here while I check things out?’

  When Sarah replied in the negative I was secretly relieved. Not that I expected her to do much more than I could achieve, but having her presence at my back did help firm up my spine.

  ‘OK, but if there’s anyone there, I want you to run down and out the front door. Call the police when you’re outside.’

  ‘That’s if there’s actually anyone there,’ she reminded me.

  Until then the thought that our noisy visitor could be anything but a real person hadn’t entered my mind. Now that uneasy feeling that whom we had been seeking to hear from earlier had finally decided to introduce themselves sent a qualm through me. The short hairs bristled on my neck. Suddenly I lost the resolve to go up the stairs. I looked at Sarah again, and saw her chew at the corner of her lip. She nodded me on. Her hero.

  Swearing under my breath at my idiocy, I planted my foot on the first step.

  The banging continued, an intermittent knocking.

  An air blockage in the water pipes, I hoped.

  Arriving at the bathroom door, I sneaked a glance at the nearby landing wall, but my vision must have been too pinpointed for it to matrix any image
s. Thankful for small mercies, I leaned so my ear was next to the bathroom door.

  ‘Go on.’

  I jumped.

  How Sarah had climbed the stairs without me realising is no surprise in hindsight, but at the time I almost messed my jogging pants. ‘Jesus,’ I hissed.

  ‘Go on in,’ she urged.

  ‘It isn’t coming from the bathroom.’ I pointed upward.

  ‘But we’ve already checked those rooms.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  But we’d have to check again.

  Braver now about looking in the bathroom, I turned the handle and pressed open the door. Nobody was in sight. I quickly went in and checked the toilet cubicle at the end. Shook my head as I returned to Sarah, and again pointed upstairs. ‘Do you hear it?’

  Catching her bottom lip on her eyeteeth, she nodded.

  We backtracked, and again I sneaked glances in the rooms on that floor. I needn’t have bothered, as it was evident from where the knocking originated. I stood at the foot of the narrow stairwell, peering up.

  Yesterday upon the stair I met a man who wasn’t there…

  He wasn’t there now, and it was a relief.

  Going up, I held the hammer ready to bash out the brains of anyone desperate enough to try to run past me. Did I have it in me to deliver a crushing blow? Right then, right there, the answer was yes. Whether a burglar would give me the opportunity to get in the first strike was debatable. The hammer shaft was slick with sweat.

  Bangbangbang!

  The knocking came like a volley of machinegun fire.

  ‘What the hell is that?’

  I spared a glance at Sarah who was following close on my heels. The question was pointless because I had no answer.

  Gaining the tiny hallway, we stopped. Sarah pressed tightly against me, one arm around my waist. Her touch gave me the courage to lean into the bedroom we’d recently shared.

  Boom!

  The previous sounds had come like gunshots; this was more of a mortar blast. We fell back against the dumbwaiter closet door. Our language was choice.

  ‘Did something blow up?’ Sarah managed.

  I couldn’t be sure, but my first instinct was that the sound had simply been a forceful knock from within the bedroom. Briefly I wondered if the racket had come from above, from the roof itself, but I knew it hadn’t. That was no clubfooted bird at roost. It was been a deliberate knock on the wall to the right. Cursing the fact I’d unplugged the lamp, and left it downstairs, I took a look at where I believed the sound came from: the walk-in wardrobe door.

  We’d neglected to check the wardrobe earlier.

  All this time while we’d searched the house, whoever – whatever - was stuck in the wardrobe had continued their incessant banging. It was as Sarah had pointed out, the acoustics were crazy. Banging on the back wall of the cupboard would make a noise in the first floor landing – which would then be carried back up the stairs and through the bedroom door.

  ‘Put your phone light on,’ I whispered.

  Sarah complied and cast the beam over the cupboard doors.

  Bang!

  The doors moved a fraction.

  Bangbangbang!

  They rattled in the frame.

  ‘Who’s there?’ I demanded.

  No answer.

  ‘Who’s there? I’ve got to warn you, we’ve called the police and they’re on the way here. You’ve got seconds at best to come out and give yourself up.’

  Bangbangbang!

  ‘Right,’ I shouted. ‘Don’t say you weren’t warned.’

  Rushing to the doors, I jammed my foot against the central gap so that the doors couldn’t be pushed open.

  Bang! Boom! Bang!

  I rammed my shoulder to the doors. I could feel the solid thumps through the wood.

  ‘I warned you. Now you’re not getting out. The police will be here any second.’ Looking for Sarah, I motioned for her to make the call. But she didn’t stab the buttons.

  ‘I don’t think we should,’ she warned. ‘I don’t think they’re going to find a person.’

  To be fair, I didn’t either. But if there was a wild animal in my cupboard I wanted someone on hand to capture and take it away.

  ‘Open the door, Jack,’ Sarah urged.

  ‘What? Are you crazy?’

  ‘We can’t go on like this all night, can we?’

  There was no need to think it through, she was correct. The logical thing to do was open the bloody doors and put an end to the mystery. If some stray cat had found its way into the cupboard, then releasing it was the thing to do.

  ‘OK. But keep back. There’s no saying how it will react.’

  B-b-b-b-bang!

  The door rattled under the impacts. They were weaker than before but no less disconcerting.

  I steadied myself, the hammer ready, my foot still jamming the doors. A quick check with Sarah earned me a nod. She held her phone in one hand and the chisel the other. She didn’t look as if she had it in her to stab anything, but her support was better than nothing.

  I yanked open the doors, stepping quickly aside. I expected a sleek critter to come flying out the cupboard and seek exit. Nothing moved. So it was probably huddled in a corner now, fearing for its life. I moved closer, waving Sarah over with her phone light. She shone it into the cupboard. I’d hung some of my clothing, piled some more on the floor. There was nothing else in there.

  Nothing visible.

  Cautiously I probed through the clothing on the floor with my feet. Nothing moved. I shifted the hanging garments with the hammer. Nothing.

  It made no sense. There was nothing physically there.

  Something else was missing.

  The banging had stopped the instant I opened the doors.

  ‘This makes no sense,’ I said.

  BANG!

  I screamed and threw myself out of the wardrobe, sprawling on the floor at Sarah’s feet. She did a little dance of fright, eyes and mouth wide open. We both craned to look at the open wardrobe door, which still rattled from the forceful impact.

  19

  Dream on, Casanova

  ‘We asked for proof and we got it.’

  Sarah was pale from the shock. We’d reconvened in the parlour on the ground floor, the nearest room to the exit door. I’d made tea to settle our nerves while Sarah dressed, adding plenty of sugar to the brew. Apparently sweet tea was a good antidote to shock. I was on my second mug but Sarah still cupped her first, her elbows on her knees as she rocked slowly back and forward.

  ‘I only wish I knew what the hell it was.’

  ‘It’s common to hear knocking during hauntings,’ Sarah explained. ‘Sometimes it’s the only way a spirit has of communicating with us. We asked it to speak, it replied the only way it could.’

  ‘By scaring the living daylights out of us?’

  ‘Just because the sounds were loud doesn’t mean it was ominous. Maybe it was just frustrated because it couldn’t find a way to let us know what it really wanted.’ Sarah moved her mug to her lips, but paused before sipping. The cup went back to her lap untouched. ‘There’s a theory that ghosts manifest using the available energy in the atmosphere. There was little for it to draw upon, so it couldn’t find the strength to speak as we asked. So it knocked. Maybe it wanted us to respond in kind.’

  ‘By using Morse code?’ My tone was sarcastic.

  ‘More like “two knocks for yes, one knock for no”. It’s a method of communication that’s been used for years during séances. By asking certain yes and no questions you can usually determine who the spirit is and what they want from us.’

  Now that we were downstairs and the sky lightening outside, I wasn’t as frightened as before. As my nerve returned, so did my doubt. ‘It was probably nothing to do with ghosts. The house is old, the wardrobe door was probably just contracting or something.’

  ‘Jack, how can you say that? You know the banging wasn’t a result of the bloody wood shrinking. Stop all this denial, will you?�
��

  I shrugged. ‘I’m only saying.’

  ‘Well don’t. The longer you keep coming up with alternative excuses, the longer it will take to get to the bottom of this.’

  ‘Maybe I don’t want to get to the bottom of it: maybe I only want it all to stop. Jesus Christ! We’re talking about a bloody haunting here.’

  The very fact we were on the subject severely challenged my belief system. When challenged, I was the type to grow defensive. If that meant me coming up with alternative theories for everything that had happened then Sarah would just have to live with it.

  ‘It’s so frustrating.’ I’m not sure if she was referring to the situation or the fact I was being as stubborn as usual. ‘What was it trying to tell us, Jack?’

  ‘I haven’t got a clue. But I don’t like the idea that it was spying on us from the bloody closet. Heard of any pervert ghosts before?’

  ‘That’s not funny.’

  ‘But it’s true. Do you think it was watching us when we were…well, you know?’

  ‘Having sex.’ She said it perfunctorily. I noticed her mouth twist slightly at the thought. ‘If it was an actual spirit, then maybe it was watching. They’re the essence of a deceased human with all the same likes and dislikes.’

  ‘A lecherous ghost: who’d have thought?’

  ‘But maybe not,’ Sarah went on. ‘If it was there when we were having sex it didn’t let us know. Why wait until hours later?’

  ‘Maybe it was enjoying the peepshow and didn’t want us to stop. Who knows, maybe it started all that banging to wake us up hoping for another show.’

  ‘You’re sick.’

  ‘And horny,’ I said.

  She shook her head. ‘It’s almost morning. We need to start thinking about getting ready for work.’

  ‘I’m not going in.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’m going to throw a sickie. You should too.’

  ‘I can’t take a sick day. I’m management, Jack.’

  ‘Of course you can. Daniel’s always spouting on about how much he loves being at work, so let him roll up his sleeves and get stuck in for a change.’

  ‘No. I’m not doing it. It will fall on our workmates to pick up the slack if we don’t go in.’