Page 60 of Dead Serious: Case 3 Mr Bruce Reyes

“Hmph,” she huffs. “I s’ppose so.”

“Do you know about the portal, the one that leads to the afterlife?” I ask carefully.

She huffs again. “The one you’re always turning up to see–”

“Bruce?”

“That’s the one.” She nods. “He tried explaining it to me when I started being able to see them. Can’t say I really understand it all, but I suppose that’s why there were so many of them in here.”

“So you really couldn’t see the ghosts before I showed up?”

She shrugs. “I think they were always there. I remember seeing stuff as a kid, stuff that scared me, so I convinced myself it wasn’t real. Then you and that tall blonde one showed up and the floodgates opened. Couldn’t lock it all back in.”

“I’m sorry,” I offer, knowing that must have been very unsettling for her, especially since she dealt with it all on her own.

“As much as you pissed me off, it really wasn’t your fault,” Viv sighed. “The truth is, I come from a family of weird shit.”

“How so?”

“Do you remember I told you I was related to that Victorian nut-ball Cornelius Crawshanks?”

“The Victorian medium.” I use that term very loosely. The poor guy was able to see the dead, but he was also an opium addict and notorious drunk.

I watch as Viv picks up a bottle of gin from beside her chair and takes a long swig straight from the bottle. Maybe the apple didn’t fall far from the tree of a few generations ago, but it makes me stop and think. We’ve all kind of shrugged off her gin habit or joked about it, but I’m starting to think it’s more than that. I didn’t know her before she began seeing the ghosts in her shop, but I get the feeling her drinking has kicked up several notches since then, especially given the number of bottles I can now see around her little room.

I have to admit I’m starting to worry about her. She doesn’t seem to have anyone else, and I think, like her ancestor Cornelius, she might be using the drink as a coping mechanism.

“That’s right.” Viv wipes her mouth on her sleeve. “Cornelius never married or had kids. I think he batted for the other team like you do, if you know what I mean.”

“Oh?”

“I remember someone in my family talking about it at some point.” She shakes her head. “Anyway, he had two older sisters. The middle sister is the one Evangeline and I are descended from. Don’t know too much about the oldest sister, but she was really the black sheep of the family.”

“Really?” I lean closer, intrigued by her family history. “How so?”

“Well, dear old Cornelius was always front and centre in the family drama, what with his… issues. But his sisters… the one I’m descended from, they said she just had a knowing about her, would have strange dreams about things before they happened. But the other one… well, there were whispers.”

“Whispers?” I repeat.

“Of witchcraft.” She shakes her head. “Nonsense, of course. I mean, witchcraft isn’t real, just a lot of dancing around campfires and lighting candles.”

I wasn’t about to correct her.

“One thing I do know about this building though,” Viv says as she continues to eat, “is that it’s been in my family for nearly two hundred years, and it’s got secrets.”

“Secrets?”

“My mum used to talk about a secret room where the entrance had been walled up. My gran talked about it too, said it was bricked up even when she was a kid, but none of them could say where it was. And that’s not all. The family was always rife with rumours, every generation. One of my ancestors apparently murdered his mistress and hid her under the floorboards. Someone else said there was treasures sealed up in the walls.”

“Wow,” I murmur as I stare at her.

If even a fraction of what she says is true, I’m not sure how we’re going to track down the origins of the portal. I don’t even know where to start.

“Want to watchCelebrity Gogglebox?” Viv picks up the TV remote.

“Sure,” I respond absently, wondering, and not for the first time, what the hell I’m doing.

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