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CHAPTER TWENTY

MORBID MATHS

T he two were in firm agreement that enabling a fast escape from the haunted house was probably a wise idea. They took the coffee table and a chair from the lounge to the same part of the wall they’d climbed over, and erected a sketchy platform.

This being done, they reentered Cleo’s home, and threaded their way through the wide and ever-changing lower floor. It was, just as Percy had said it would be, a strange time capsule. Items extravagant or intimate that had belonged to the many previous inhabitants were strewn here and there. Pieces raided from antique shops and opportunity stores. All of it curated with a loving eye.

For the second time in as many days, Joe got the unwelcome feeling of a vague… ‘fondness’ wasn’t the word, because he was set to despise Cleo from day one, but… He felt the presence of a whole and full person who must have had a sensitive temperament at times. He couldn’t help but imagine her placing that broken milk jug on the mantelpiece. Worthless, Percy said, but, to Joe, it was still pleasing. Something of a past and a home. Families sharing meals. The conjuring of the eye of the person who found it in a shop long ago and fell in love with it on the spot. That first honest and simple burst of love—an expression of the little hopes—the great hopes—people sometimes pin on inanimate objects.

Percy was quiet, but he filled the occasional too-long silence with guarded comments on certain items. Guarded, Joe knew, because it might upset him to hear too much about the way Cleo and Percy, together, related to those items. How many had he steered her towards? How many had he delighted in the discovery of? How often had he admired her taste and wealth?

Not where the John Constable painting was concerned, at least, Joe knew. Percy had once described Constable’s work as ‘cloying and dull all at once, with an offensive knowingness’. Joe got a small, pleased kick out of the hate-filled glare Percy sent the thing when he laid eyes on it a moment after Joe had. He couldn’t help but wonder what it was doing there. Did she love it? Was it an investment?

At about the midpoint of their reconnaissance, Joe paused at a small doorway leading through to a low hall, the floor of which was the only place they had discovered thus far that was free of the clinging dust. He stared warily down the passage for a time, and the longer he stood there, the less inclined he felt to explore it. The house was already disturbing, even for one as well versed in the supernatural as Joe was, but that passage… A kind of vertigo began to overtake him, and while the logical side of his mind told him his very purpose in being there was to explore such strange and forbidding areas, there was an accompanying nausea, a clawing dread, that prevented him taking a step closer.

Percy appeared at his side, his voice making Joe jump at the sudden reminder of life. “You feel it too.”

“The bricked-up fireplace?” asked Joe, eyes deep in the void.

“Just at the end of the hall. Hopefully, we can avoid it.”

Their attention was called away by a rumble behind them. Two handsome faces flicked to the mantelpiece to see a large, heavy candelabra, shaking, more and more violently, until it was rocking side to side, edging closer.

Both hearts pumped fresh blood in readiness to dodge an assault, but the thing simply slipped to the floor with a sharp clang, and rolled to still in the dust.

“It is quite heavy, I suppose,” said Joe.

Percy laughed, threw an arm around Joe’s neck, and brought them back on track.

Every remaining room was much the same, in that each was completely different from the last. The same homely, chaotic, orderly disorder, over and over. Parlours, the library, the kitchen and bathroom, the occasional guest room. But wherever the building meandered, if it ran beneath those upper floorboards, the dust coated every surface, and remained totally undisturbed until they passed through. When they finally wound their way back to where they began, and to the base of a thin and uneven staircase by the living room, they felt marginally more confident that they were alone.

Until the top step creaked.

Percy’s foot was on the bottom stair, blade at the ready, eyes locked on.

Joe’s hand was on his arm. “It’s a ghost. It has to be. Unless there’s another way in upstairs?”

“No.” Percy gave a nod and slowed his movement. “You’re right.”

“So just… keep an eye out for flying objects. We’ll be fine.”

“Yes. Though…” Percy commenced the ascent, thinking out loud, “There wasn’t a poltergeist here before. There were—obviously it’s haunted, but never anything physical like the vase and the candelabra. That suggests it’s a new ghost and, well, you know what that means.”

“A trauma haunting.” Joe took Percy’s little finger into his hand, drawing his worried gaze. “We knew this was going to happen. Or that it was likely. That’s why we’re here.”

“It’s the ash, though. If it’s what I think it is…” He trailed off, not ready yet to reveal his full, grotesque thoughts to Joe. “What if it’s not ghosts?”

The floorboards above shifted, and a shimmer of powder fell between them.

“If it’s not a ghost, then what the hell is it?”

Percy shook his head in response.

Joe released Percy’s hand and let him be just as alert and ready for a fight as he needed to be.

The top of the stairs intersected with a thin hall leading away to the left and right. Carpeted, just as Percy said it would be, a deep and rich blue, with barely a hint of dust.

Percy checked both directions and led them off to the right. The hall continued, thinly, clad in faded cream and gold floral wallpaper to a barred window at the end. A painting shuffled, flew off the wall and smashed into the wall opposite. “This is different,” said Percy, ignoring the painting. He quickened his pace to the nearest door and stopped dead, bracing himself against the frame.

Inside was a spartan room. One bed, metal frame, bars on the window. He quickly moved on to the next. One bed, metal frame, bars on the window. Then again, then again, until he strode past Joe back up the hall to find exactly the same on the other side. “She’s turned it into a prison.”

There was, above, a third floor yet to investigate, but Percy moved around the stairs and to the base of this next flight, then dropped to the floor. He dug his dagger deep into the blue carpet and ripped it apart. He tore two long lines, parallel, then slit a path between them, flipping the carpet back to reveal the floorboards.

Dusty beneath that carpet.

He dug the knife between two planks and levered it back and forth until his dagger was like to snap.

“Let me.” Percy moved back, and Joe brought the crowbar crashing down on the old wood. He hit it three times, hard, gaining enough purchase on the splintering wood to slide the crowbar in. His hands and his wrists shook with the effort, until finally, the board snapped in two.

Percy moved strong fingers around the broken plank and wrenched it back with a loud crack.

Dust and more dust lay beneath the floorboard. Thick dust. Disturbingly thick.

Percy straightened his hand and pushed it in. Down and down his fingers sank, touching a solid surface only once he was in to the wrist. “That’s a lot of dust.” Percy’s harrowed gaze passed towards the expanse of the hall, his mind calculating just how many metres square that floor was, because it leaked the dust over every inch beneath. He ran his hand through the mess, searching, saying, “You’re a priest. Just how much ash do you think a cremated body makes?”

Joe had, for some time, been thinking the same awful thought. It only made things worse to know Percy had already come to that conclusion. “About three litres.”

“And less for a teenage girl, I’ll wager.” His hard eyes met Joe’s. “So, how many do you think it would take to fill this space?”

Joe wanted the foul suggestion away from both of them as quickly as possible. “You don’t know that’s what this is…”

His words drifted away as Percy’s search halted, and as he held up a small, blackened object. Small and round. Unmistakably bone. “Vertebra?”

The enormity of it washed over Joe in one sick wave. So sick that he felt his mouth water, the bile at the back of his throat, his stomach churning as he stood, staggered to the bannister of the staircase to support himself.

Percy’s hand was on his back, travelling softly to his shoulder, where he gave a gentle squeeze, then snapped Joe out of the swoon with his thickly spoken words. “Save it. We haven’t figured out where that smell’s coming from yet. Things are about to get a whole lot worse.”