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CHAPTER NINETEEN

BARMISTON HALL

P ercy and Joe kept to the pebbly edge of the long lake, boots crunching, water lapping, as Barmiston Hall menaced larger and larger against the granite morning sky.

Joe wondered if Percy felt half as nervous as he did. Quiet by his side, the shoulders of his black coat paling with the fine mist of fog sweeping over the lake, he looked the same as he always did. Bold, confident, alert, aware, and in control. Ready for anything.

The first grave appeared on their left. A small, old, oval-shaped stone, fallen face-down in a tuft of tough grass. Another, a little further along, overgrown except for a few blackening and illegible letters etched at the top. Then more and more, dotted here and there, unvisited and unloved. Forgotten dead, mouldering damp in the ground.

Percy’s path meandered to the left and away from the lake. Joe followed him up a green incline, hard by a wall, until they rounded the corner into the closest thing the island had to woods. Small but dense, a folly of sorts, Percy wandered, sure-footed, over roots, fallen branches, and a carpet of bluebells which he crushed underfoot, until somewhere around the centre of the plantation he held back the drooping, ponderous branches of a great willow tree.

Joe entered the green arbour and watched as Percy circled the thick trunk, then ripped away some old bark and leaves, before thrusting his fingers into a hollow.

Joe slapped his arm back from the tree. “Were you never told to not stick your hands into dark holes?”

Percy shrugged him off, held him at bay with one hand, and groped deeper in, up to his biceps. “It’s Shetland. There’s nothing venomous here.”

Joe watched on with a small tremble to his lips. “Black widow spiders are everywhere now. It’s a fact. London’s crawling with them.”

Percy winced with the effort of his grasping fingers. “Are you frightened of spiders?”

“I’m a rational human.” Joe took an involuntary step back from Percy and the seemingly bottomless hole. “So yes.”

“I hear a black widow bite is like holding a burning match to your skin for twenty straight minutes,” Percy replied, screwing up his face and stretching his arm further still.

With the delivery of Percy’s informative comment, a small panic overtook Joe at the thought of what must lie unseen in there, and he lunged for Percy. “Fuck! Could you—Spiders!—fucking—stop it?—”

While Joe blustered out random words, he yanked at Percy, Percy fought him off with his spare hand, and a small one-armed scuffle broke out between them, until, “Got it!” Percy withdrew, unfurled his clenched fingers, and revealed his rusty prize. A key. Long unused and about as forgotten as the dead out in the lawn. With a proud smile, he said, “I want to point out that I didn’t pretend to be bitten by a spider just then.”

Joe let go of him, shoving his frazzled locks back, assuming an air of dignified self-control. “You’re very mature. Thank you. I appreciate it.”

Percy, naturally, had only one response. “Kiss me.”

Putty-Joe placed a gentle kiss on Percy’s lips and felt himself calm at the soft press that met them.

Percy cast a glance over his shoulder towards the thicker side of the woods, where a great wall surrounding the estate blocked what little sunlight was available that cloudy day. “The easiest way in will be via these trees.”

“Over the wall?” Joe assessed the dense boundary ahead of them.

“Mmmm. There’s broken glass on top to keep intruders out. Be careful.”

Percy boosted Joe into the tree, where, lying on a thick branch, Joe pulled Percy up next to him. It was a relatively simple matter from there for the pair to traverse the jigsaw of abundant and untouched growth and make their way to the top of the wall. There they perched to examine a discordant scene. Behind them, lush woods, flowers, endless green. Inside the walls of the property, the ground was devoid of all life. No plants. No insects. Some grass had tried and failed, evidenced by a few yellowy-brown clumps here and there between wide cracks in the bare earth, but that was the sum of all nature in the place.

With two dizzying and ill-advised leaps, both landed on hard, compacted dirt.

Joe’s eyes swept across the cold, unfeeling expanse, and to the face of the house. Iron bars clung to every window, bolted on the outside, making the place utterly inescapable once trapped within. It was a dwelling, he knew, that a new guest, once arrived, would not have expected to leave any time soon. “Poor Althea.”

Percy commenced a slow walk to the entrance, offering only, “The bars are new.”

The castle, because that’s what it was to Joe’s eyes, loomed three stories high, stark and uneasy, as though the black stones might topple over and swallow them up at any time. If Percy had said the place was held together and fed with the congealed blood of a thousand victims of barbaric murder, Joe would have believed it. There was an atmosphere. Not like any other haunted Scottish residence on a dark and forbidding day. It was unique, and Joe had never felt anything quite like it.

Percy, his boot on the first step, evidently shared Joe’s foreboding. “I’ve got a very bad feeling.”

Joe’s fast pulse doubled its speed. Percy pulled his dagger free, and Joe readied the nice crowbar Percy had gifted him an hour prior. Both forced one foot in front of the other up the stairs and across the aching porch.

Percy pushed the old key into the keyhole, began to turn it, and Joe said, “Do you think it’s odd she’d leave a key to get in when the place is otherwise so impenetrable?”

Percy’s dark eyes cut across to Joe’s. “Yes. I do think it’s odd. Be on your guard.”

It took some work, but the key turned roughly, the lock clicked jarringly, and the door groaned open, echoing throughout the enormous hall, two stories high, and made of stone that stared blankly back at them with all the sympathy of an executioner.

A musty scent hit them in the face.

Musty, with an undercurrent of putrid rot.

“That’s dead,” said Percy.

Joe nodded.

“Old dead,” Percy clarified. “Not freshly dead.”

Joe passed the tip of his tongue swiftly over dry lips. “Thanks.”

The floor held a thick layer of dust, recording each footprint as they stepped into the towering room. The walls were decorated with tapestries, paintings, everything old and antique and too much of all of it, mismatched and matched so that it should have been welcoming. The look was right, but every inch held a creeping dread, as though the décor itself breathed and desired their cruel demise.

Three interior doors came off the entranceway, and Percy led them directly forward and into a grand lounge. Everything, again, was thoroughly covered in that thick dust. “How long ago did Althea say they left?”

“Six months,” Joe supplied. “Seven now, since she’s been with us.”

Percy, in the centre of the room, turned sharply. “It can’t be. This dust— It’s on everything. And it’s undisturbed. How could that build up in seven months?” He ran a finger along the length of a picture frame, examining the brown powder that coated his fingertips. “It’s very fine.”

Joe dropped down, the floor creaking as he passed his hand across the smooth wooden boards. “This doesn’t feel like dust.” He ran his thumb over the soft, yielding brown. “And it’s dark. Too dark. It feels like?—”

“Ash,” Percy finished. His eyes went to the grand fireplace, black and gaunt and towering over them. Perfectly unused. The fresh logs that awaited burning were covered in just as thick a mess as all the rest of it. The lounge, the cushions, expensive ornaments Percy had seen Cleo buy at auction—every speck was covered in an even film. “What the hell’s happened here?”

Joe watched as Percy turned his attention to the ceiling—the floorboards of the level above. Anticipating Joe’s question, he supplied, “It’s carpeted. Whatever might be up there… It can’t explain this…”

A vase flew across the room and hit the wall with a loud smash, narrowly missing Joe’s head as it went. The vibration, the thump against that wall, set loose a chain reaction along the floorboards above, and a slow, thin shower of dust fell over their arms, hands, shoulders, all through their hair. Percy slowly turned his hand over, watching the almost weightless particles settle there.

He was shaken, to say the least. Shaken by the change and the tone of a place he knew well. Shaken by the rising fear that he had no idea what any of it meant. Child sacrifice was awful, routinely, yet he had steeled himself for that inevitability. This was something different. The house that seemed alive all around them. The death that seemed to have invaded the very ground upon which the house stood. The betrayal, if it was that, by his friend…

The first solid shards of doubt slid into his gut and hardened there with every speck of dust that settled over him.

This had to be larger than Cleo—larger than anything she could have done—because Percy had his suspicions about what that ashy substance was, as it touched their lips, landed on their eyelashes, as they breathed it deep into their lungs. And despite everything he had seen and heard, Cleo, doing what she would need to have done to make this—it was too incongruent.

It must have been something else.

Something much, much worse.

“We should do a search.” Joe was careful to hide his fear and disgust when he spoke, because Percy had never looked quite like he did at that moment. Not in front of Joe. They had a job to do, and there was no chance Percy would walk out on it, therefore Joe offered what little protection he could by taking control. “A methodical search. We’ll start on the left side of the house and work our way through. We’ll do the downstairs first, then we’ll go up. Stick together, make two clear sets of footprints, and we’ll check the dust for anyone else’s tracks as we go.”

The tight line of Percy’s jaw shifted ever so slightly. “Ghosts don’t leave footprints, handsome.”

With a glance at the broken vase, “If it’s only ghosts we’re dealing with, we’ll be fine. It’s not like we haven’t done it before.”

Percy’s shoulders softened, and his eyes mellowed a little, from confused and verging on desperate, to warm, with a touch of melancholy. “I’m glad you’re here. It gets very old doing this sort of thing alone. And it’s nice that it’s you.”

The infernal terror pounding at his every fibre was the only thing that prevented Joe from melting into a useless heap. It was one of those moments he felt like Percy’s only one. It brought his heart very close to bursting to be needed like that, the rare time Percy showed that soft shade of vulnerability.

Joe held his hand out, and Percy gladly took it.