Underhill: A Halloween Story (Tyack & Frayne #8)
Harper Fox
Chapter One
“And so, as the Halloween dark draws in, spare a thought for Gwen and Johnny Nancarrow, who met such strange deaths in this ordinary room. I wish I could’ve found some answers for you tonight—but for now, at least, it looks as though Underhill House will be keeping its secrets.”
“Right, cut. Perfect. Lovely.” Anna gestured to the cameraman, who gave her a thumbs-up. “Damn you anyway, Lee.”
“What? Why?”
“Spirits of Cornwall is doing really well, you know. I want all the shows I direct to be that good. So I try to work out what it is about your presentation style that pulls people in—because we don’t always have much material, and we’re so low-budget it’s scary. And there you are, with your hands in the pockets of your jeans, talking to the camera as if you were in your own living room. Wearing your pumpkin jumper.” She paused, looked him over critically. “You wouldn’t consider swapping that for a plain one and doing another take?”
“Not a chance. Ma Frayne knitted this for me, and I swore I’d wear it on the Halloween edition. All her friends in Roselands will drop dead of envy, she said—not literally, I hope.”
“Don’t change the subject. I’d love to show my other presenters how to do what you do. But... you’re not really doing anything at all, are you?”
Lee shrugged. He hitched up onto the window sill behind him. His smile, wry as it was, shed light on the bare little room. “I still get paid, though, right?”
“Stop it. I really would like to know. You’re... quiet, modest. You’re the only genuine clairvoyant I’ve ever worked with, but you don’t throw your gifts around. And you write your own scripts.”
“That’s how I get all the best lines.”
“You’re just being yourself. That’s what’s so frustrating. There’s only one of you, and I can’t reproduce your whammy anywhere else.”
“I dunno, Anna.” Lee rubbed his eyes, an end-of-day weariness surfacing. “The whammy’s been in short supply today. Jack got some great background shots, and we covered the history of the place, but...”
“The ghosts were a no-show? Didn’t you tell me yourself that not all violent deaths come back and haunt?”
“Yeah. We’d be hip-deep in ectoplasm if they all did.” He sighed. “No, poor Gwen and Johnny are long gone, God rest ’em. They’re at peace. I wouldn’t call them back if I could.”
Anna frowned. “You see, you say those things—at peace, and God rest them—like an ordinary bloke. Like your preacher brother-in-law. And I know it’s not what you mean.”
“Well—it is, in a way. Look, if I said they’d returned to the quantum magic of creation, by the power of the divinity within us and without us, I’d sound like a right twat, wouldn’t I?”
Anna laughed, the sound of it oddly sad. “Maybe. I prefer it, though. Is that what you believe?”
“Not a matter of belief, is it? Not for me.”
She hesitated. But Jack was busy with his camera bags, and there was no-one else to listen, alive or dead, in the grim house. “There’s something I’ve always meant to ask you, Lee. You remember when we got that amazing footage in the underground chamber at Drift church?”
“Mm. The stuff they’re still picking apart in the labs to try and prove it was you, me and Gideon arsing around with torches?”
“Yeah. It made me cry, for the first time in as long as I can remember, because I’ve never believed in—well, anything, really. The thing is, when I was a very young kid, my aunt was driving me and my brother to a football match one weekend. And another car hit us at a roundabout, and...”
She faded out. He was watching her quietly. His attention was entirely hers. He would have watched and listened all night, if she’d wanted, like a priest keeping vigil in a tomb. It was part of what he gave, one of the many reasons he was loved. And she knew he’d tried to build walls, seen a counsellor to show him how, but those visits had stopped. He was once more wide open to anyone who came to him in need. She didn’t know how he bore it, except...
Except that he had Gideon. She pushed her fringe out of her eyes. “And you know all this,” she concluded. “You have done for years. And I never told anyone—not even Jack.”
“I’m so sorry, Anna. So sorry you lost them.”
She opened her mouth to reply. A sob came out instead. Mortified, she turned away, but he had moved silently and was right there in front of her, holding out a clean handkerchief. She pushed it aside and briefly laid her head on his shoulder instead. The hand-knitted jumper must have been a hair shirt to him, its orange fibres scratching like brambles. After a moment she pushed him back, giving him a grateful kiss on the cheek before she let go. “Okay. When I try to think about them going back to the... What did you call it? The quantum magic of creation?”
“Something like that.”
“I see why you end up saying things like God rest their souls instead. It’s easier to use the forms that people understand, I suppose.”
“Sometimes, yes.” His gaze became distant. “Actually, there is something more I’d like to say about this house.”
Both she and Jack were used to this. His visions could come on with full-scale poltergeist activity, or quietly as the opening of a door. Jack was already hoisting his Panasonic out of its case and back onto his shoulder. Lee retreated to the window ledge once more. Anna gestured eagerly to Jack. “Ready?”
“Got a lot of light behind him, but it looks good, kind of like cobwebs or wings.”
“Right. Roll.”
Lee cleared his throat. He laced his fingers together and cracked his knuckles, a frequent sign that he was about to get down to some serious psychic interaction. “To all the indwelling spirits of this place,” he began solemnly, watching some eerie point behind Jack’s head, “I have only this to say. What a time-wasting bunch of tossers you are! Drag my poor mates Anna and Jack all the way out here, will you, after a whole season of tireless, heroic, brilliant bloody work—on Halloween night, too, when doubtless they’ve got parties and places to go—for sweet fuck-all?” He paused, beaming, his loving silver-green gaze steady on the camera. “Shame on the whole undead lot of you.”
Anna shook her head. Jack was melting into snorts of laughter. “Thank you, Lee,” she said dryly. “We won’t be using that bit.”
***
“Go on, you two. It’s getting late.”
“Are you kidding? What would your Gideon do to us if we left you alone in a haunted house?”
“You don’t have to worry. It isn’t one—not today, anyway. Nothing doing here.”
“Well, if you’re sure, I did promise to help my sister steer her kids around the mean streets of Liskeard.”
“What about you, Jack? Partying with the Camborne zombies?”
“Nah, that’s every other night. Rocky Horror at the Redruth Regal, full costume and props.”
“Wow. You definitely don’t want to be late for that.”
“Especially since a contingent from Kernow Glan Nowydh is turning up to boycott.”
Lee’s eyes widened. Gideon and the Falmouth police had effectively pulled the teeth of the xenophobic Cornish Purity movement that summer. But nowydh meant new. Lee found it hard to believe that anyone would want to model themselves on a bunch of racist halfwits who shoved race, religion and orientation into the same bag, marked it foreign and walloped it with any stick they could find. Still, boycotting cinemas was better than throwing fertiliser bombs at kids in a Pride parade. “Take care, mate. That lot can turn nasty.”
“Born nasty, if you ask me. Don’t worry, I’ll watch my sequin-clad arse.”
“Sequins? Columbia, right?”
“You got it.” Jack grinned. “I bet you and Gideon have a wild night planned.”