Page 37 of Murder Most Haunted

‘What the hell are you wearing?’ Harold stared at Noah, his mouth opening and shutting in stunned surprise.

He wasn’t alone.

While they were waiting in the driveway outside, to everyone’s disbelief Noah had appeared on the steps dressed in a floor-length fur-trimmed cloak.

‘It’s from my cosplay,’ explained Noah, squinting against the brightness of the snow. ‘Warder of Ringhorn.’

‘What?’ said Harold, baffled.

‘I don’t have anything else suitable to wear in the cold,’ he complained, pulling the cloak tightly around him. ‘The brochure didn’t say we were staying in the Arctic.’

Even outside in the fresh air, Midge could smell the mothballs.

‘And you just happened to have that packed in your suitcase?’ asked Rona, her eyes wide.

Noah flushed. ‘My mum must have put it in by accident. She doesn’t really get the whole LARP thing.’

Midge thought Harold was going to explode.

‘A larp?!’ His breath came out in a cloud of frost.

‘Live Action Role Play.’ Noah rolled his eyes. ‘LARP.’

An unfortunate acronym, which in Midge’s opinion sounded more like an unsavoury bodily function.

‘You mean there’s more of you?!’ Harold shook his head. ‘I’ve heard it all now.’

The walk to the engine house proved just as treacherous as Midge had expected, and as they moved further from the hall, she had the uncomfortable sensation of shrinking into the landscape.

Although the blizzard had stopped overnight, the top layer of powder had frozen, leaving an icy barrier that was lethal to scramble over.

Midge, in particular, struggled with her knee, and by the time they had climbed over the keep-out signs and fencing around the derelict building, she was numb to her bones and the bracing tang of the air was aggravating her asthma.

Behind the engine house were several other buildings, the largest of which housed the entrance to the main shaft.

The engine house itself was built from mottled granite bricks and timber, and wherever the wood had been exposed to the elements, it had rotted away, leaving gaping holes in the structure. The doorway was boarded up.

‘There is no way we can go in there,’ said Harold, gloomily staring in through the window. In the middle of the floor was the mouth of a vertical shaft, only two metres by two metres, with a partially eroded winching mechanism above it. ‘It’s too dangerous.’

‘Looks like we’re not the only ones who tried exploring here.’ Noah pointed to a fence post where a lone ragged pink skiing glove was caught in the barbed wire. ‘Is that one of yours, Rona?’

She pulled a face. ‘Don’t ever mention me and Gore-Tex in the same breath, Noah.’

‘Must have been some hikers.’

Suddenly overwhelmed with melancholy, Midge stared at the glove despondently waving in the breeze. Lone shoes and gloves in the outdoors always made her unbearably sad. When the others had moved on, she prised free the material from the wire and put it safely inside her handbag.

To Midge’s surprise, a low crackling sound started behind her, followed up by a persistent clicking that varied in volume and intensity as it filled the air.

‘What the hell is that?’ said Harold, shielding his eyes.

‘It’s me,’ said Noah, stepping into view from around the side of the building.

He was holding a black cone-shaped box which appeared to be the source of the clacking.

The contraption had a coloured meter on the top which swung backwards and forwards as he paced the shaft’s perimeter with it, moving his arm in a sweeping motion.

‘He’s checking for EMF,’ said Rona, excitedly grabbing hold of Midge’s arm. ‘Can you feel anything?’ she asked.

Noah stared down at the meter, which was now refusing to move from the red display. ‘Nothing.’ He shook his head, sighing in disappointment. ‘Just ambient interference.’

‘Oh, come on!’ urged Rona, giving him a quick hug. ‘We were meant to be finding a distress flare, not ghosts.’

‘But we can’t get into the engine house,’ pointed out Noah.

‘Hang on a minute.’ Harold, who had been squinting into the distance, further up the gorge, suddenly spoke up. ‘I reckon that’s one of the old adits over there.’

The others stared at him blankly. All that surrounded them were endless expanses of snow, with slopes and hills that stretched off into the far distance. But then, Midge suddenly spotted a black smudge at the bottom of the closest ridge.

‘What’s an adit?’ asked Rona, her eyes shining.

‘Normally they’re drainage tunnels for the water in the mines, but sometimes they’re built for access too. They’re horizontal, though, rather than vertical like these shafts,’ said Harold. ‘So, I reckon we could walk back into the mines and get to the engine house from there.’

The idea of yet more walking in the snow was desperately unappealing to Midge, but Rona offered to give her a hand and because she wasn’t too keen on making her way back to the house all by herself, she grudgingly agreed. Albeit with the secret hope that the tunnel would prove impassable.

The wind was cold against her cheeks as they walked and the glare off the slopes bright enough to make her eyes water. ‘I reckon this sun will start a thaw soon enough,’ said Harold, his breathing laboured as he walked.

‘Isn’t this awesome, Midge?’ Rona was tramping beside her, sunglasses pulled firmly down against the brightness. She was so energetic that Midge was having trouble keeping up. ‘Just like the slopes at Val d’Isère. Do you ski at all?’

Stopping for a breath, Midge gave Rona her best level stare, which she had the good grace to look away from. ‘Well, obviously, I suppose with the cane and everything . . .’ Rona trailed off. ‘What are these mounds, anyway?’ she asked, as they slowly resumed their way up yet another incline.

‘Slag,’ said Harold and Noah at the same time, causing Rona’s mouth to drop open.

As it turned out, Harold had been right – the adit was a roughly cut tunnel that led into the rockface, gently sloping as it wound its way down, presumably to the first seam.

‘Shall we do it, then?’ asked Harold, his words echoing back at them from the tunnel walls. ‘If we can orienteer our way back to the engine house, we may be able to find some old supplies there. Like a flare gun or something. Midge? Can you walk it, do you think?’

It was a good question. The dark entrance to the adit against the whiteness of the snow bank put Midge in mind of a cavernous mouth waiting to swallow them whole.

Noah produced a torch and shone it on to the tunnel floor.

The ground was uneven but dry and, sadly for Midge, apparently passable.

She shrugged. It was either go with the others or wait outside in the cold.

‘I’m sure it will be fine,’ she said, not even really convincing herself.

Ten minutes into the tunnel and far deeper underground than they had anticipated, things had got much worse.

The adit narrowed so much that in places it became a claustrophobic squeeze, often causing Midge to bump into the others.

The light from Noah’s torch at the front was not sufficient to light the way for all of them while they were pressed to walk single file, and the stench emanating either from the damp rock or the enforced proximity to Harold was making Midge feel nauseous.

‘How far are we going to go?’ Rona voiced the question that Midge had been asking herself since they first entered. She giggled. ‘This is reminding me of a game of sardines we had at the Playboy Mansion. Minus the sex, of course.’

‘Well, you say that,’ said Harold from behind Midge. ‘But someone here has been getting a bit handsy.’

‘I can assure you that was not me,’ Midge said immediately, in case there was any doubt. ‘You must have brushed against my cane.’

‘I think I know the difference between being felt up and a bit of wood.’

Next to her, in the dark, Midge could hear Rona sniggering.

‘At least let’s get to the first shaft,’ said Noah. ‘I want to do some recording there.’ He had been carrying the equipment in a backpack which kept hitting Midge every time he turned round.

‘I’m not sure I want to continue,’ said Rona. She had her hand on Midge’s coat to help her navigate in the semi-darkness.

As they moved further forward and the walls became thick with slime, Midge’s sense of unease grew. ‘I don’t think this is going towards the engine house,’ she said.

Harold stopped and considered things for a moment, holding his hand up as if testing some invisible wind. ‘I’m fairly sure we’re heading in the right direction,’ he said.

This wasn’t the resounding navigational confidence that Midge would have liked to have heard and, not for the first time, she couldn’t help questioning Harold’s suitability as a coach driver.

They moved forward, slowly having to drop to single file again as they squeezed through a small network of narrow tunnels.

‘What’s that noise?’ Noah hissed, suddenly swinging the light away from the group and dropping them all into pitch darkness. Harold yelled and pinched Midge so hard she considered hitting him with her cane.

A wailing throttle-like sound came hurtling through the tunnel, bouncing over them as it rushed past. ‘For God’s sake, shine the light back this way!’ shouted Harold, grabbing desperately in the dark for Noah’s torch.

The sound came again and again, a repeated wailing like that of a child weeping in pain.

‘What is it?’ Only the whites of Harold’s eyes showed up in the tunnel before Noah shone the torch back on to them. ‘Is someone hurt?’

‘Shhh . . .’ Midge held her hand up. There was something very rhythmic about the noise. A back and forth to it that she felt she knew.

‘It’s the ghost,’ whispered Harold.

‘No!’ said Midge, suddenly recognizing the sound. ‘It’s the guns above us.’

‘We must be near the ranges now, which means we’ve come too far out,’ said Harold, scratching his head. ‘We’ll have to backtrack and head home . . .’

He stopped abruptly. ‘Noah, shine your torch on the others.’