Lady of the Shades (2 page)

PART ONE

ONE

I wake abruptly from a troubled sleep to find the dead pressing in tightly around me. Half a dozen phantoms, teeth bared, snarling mutely, scratching at my face with their
insubstantial fingernails. I stifle a scream and bury my face in a pillow, waiting for the last vestiges of the nightmare to pass.

My heart is pounding and I don’t move until it’s back to normal. When I’m in control, I push myself up and stare blankly at the six ghosts. They’ve withdrawn now that
I’m awake and are simply glaring at me sullenly, the way they do most of the time. They only try to get under my skin when they think I’m ripe for the freaking, choosing their moments
with studious care, for maximum impact.

Usually they strike on nights like this, when they see me whimpering and fidgeting in my sleep, when they know from experience that I’ll more than likely bolt awake, disorientated and
temporarily vulnerable. They can’t physically assault me, or they would have ripped me apart years ago. They have to settle for mind games, and they’re good at those. They should be.
They’ve had lots of practice.

I get up and shower. The ghosts follow me into the bathroom, passing through the walls as if the blocks were made of mist. I ignore them as I turn the water on cold and shiver in its bite.
I’m adept at ignoring them. It’s only when they occasionally catch me by surprise that they set my nerves jangling. Not like in the early days, when I was sure they were going to drive
me mad. We’ve fought a battle of the wills, the dead and I, and I’ve won out. So far anyway. Though I suspect they’ve got the rest of my life to chip away at me. And, if
they’re not just figments of my imagination, then maybe far beyond.

I’m in a foul mood. I wasn’t able to get back to sleep, so the day dragged. I kept as busy as I could, walking the streets of London, researching, writing up notes.
But I couldn’t make time pass any faster or rid myself of the headache I often get after an interrupted night’s sleep. I tried to avoid people, knowing what I’m like in this frame
of mind, apt to snap at the slightest irritation.

As night fell, I thought about postponing my meeting with Joe. We were due to case a house in Kilburn, in north London. Joe wouldn’t have cared if I’d pushed it back. But that would
have afforded the ghosts a minor victory, and they all add up. When you’re fighting for your sanity, you can’t cede even an inch of turf. Every slight setback empowers your foes, and
there’s no telling how little it might take to tip the scales.

It’s shortly after eleven p.m. on July 2nd. Joe and I have been camped out in the abandoned house for the past couple of hours, waiting for its alleged spectral inhabitant to make an
appearance. Joe sensed my dark mood and has kept small talk to a minimum.

I’ve cheered up over the course of our watch. It’s times like this, when I’m immersing myself in the murky world of the dead, that I feel most at ease with my own situation.
I’m a man in search of answers, and I find a certain measure of relief and peace of mind when I’m focused on my ghostly research.

Joe’s gone upstairs to the toilet. It doesn’t work – no water in the cistern – but he’s too polite to piss against a wall. I have no such qualms. Even if I had,
I’d rather risk my dignity than my life on those rickety stairs. I hope Joe doesn’t expect me to haul him out of the rubble if he crashes through the planks. I don’t risk my life
for anyone.

The stairs creak. I slide into the corridor to watch Joe make his descent. He’s less optimistic coming down than he was going up. Keeps to the edges and tests each step several times
before easing his weight on to it. The sight brightens my mood another few notches. ‘You should hop over the banister,’ I smirk.

‘And plunge through the floor?’ he snorts. ‘No thanks. I’ll take my chances on the stairs.’ Joe’s from northern England and has a thick accent. I had
difficulty understanding him when we first met, but it’s been four days now and my ear has adjusted. I even find myself unconsciously mimicking him sometimes.

Joe makes it back safely and lets out a grateful breath, as if he’d returned from a bombing raid on Berlin. ‘I could murder a cup of tea,’ he mutters.

‘Then you’d need to piss again.’

He nods glumly. ‘We should hire a Portaloo.’

‘Or you could just piss against the wall.’

‘I’m a Geordie,’ Joe sniffs. ‘We’re more civilized than that.’

We return to the drawing room. I used to think such rooms were so named because people drew in them. Joe put me right. It’s short for ‘withdrawing’. Goes back to the time when
men and women used to withdraw from the dining room to spend the night talking, reading and praying for the invention of television.

‘Any action?’ Joe asks, sensing the change in the air, feeling free to chat now that I’m not scowling like Rasputin.

I try my best Geordie. ‘Norra bit’ve it.’

Joe winces. ‘Do that again and I’m off.’

‘You don’t think I could pass for a native?’

‘In Australia, perhaps.’

We settle down in a pair of busted chairs to wait for the ghost. The chairs had been dumped in the yard out back. We dragged them in during our first night on watch, when we grew tired of
standing.

We’ve spent the last three nights waiting for the ghost to show. (My first night in London was devoted to a traditional pub crawl, which wasn’t as rowdy as it sounds, since Joe only
drinks non-alcoholic beer and I rarely allow myself more than four pints.) The restless spirit is meant to put in regular appearances – once or twice a week, according to the lady who owns
the place – but so far it’s been elusive.

I’m a writer. All of my books have been about ghosts. It’s not because I can’t think of anything else to write about, or because I have scores of fans hungering for my next
supernatural tome. Each book has approached the nature of poltergeists in a different way. Each has been an attempt to explain how ghosts can exist. Or, more accurately, how
my
ghosts
exist.

I’m not stupid. I know they’re probably the workings of a deluded mind. I accept that I’m most likely hovering over the abyss of an insane pit, and that the spirits are nothing
more than the projections of a deeply troubled psyche. But I don’t
want
to be crazy. I refuse to accept that I’m a loon. I want to fight this thing and find my way back to
normality.

Most people would seek psychiatric help, but that’s not an option in my case. So I’ve gone a different route. I’m trying to prove that ghosts are real. If I can do that, I can
hopefully come to terms with my own retinue, maybe even find a way to banish them.

The ghosts terrified me when they first began to appear. My world turned on its head. I had screaming fits. I sought escape through alcohol and drugs, but the ghosts followed me everywhere. I
almost blew my brains out, just to get away from them. I’m sure I would have, except that one night, in the middle of my mental anguish, I had the (probably crazy) idea that I might not be
imagining the shades, that they might be real. That slim possibility gave me the strength to pull body and soul together, and my life since then has been a quest to prove to myself that we live in
a world of wonders.

When I first started looking for proof, I read lots of ghost stories, hoping to find something that might set me on the path of true understanding. I found myself having ideas for stories of my
own, based on what I had read and my experiences in the field. Having a lot of dead time to fill (pun intended), I began tinkering with the ideas, fleshing them out. The writing helped me blank out
the ghosts. It served as an anchor to reality, gave me the sense that I was doing something meaningful, let me believe I wasn’t the raving lunatic that I fear I am.

Short stories led to longer stories, then a rough draft of a novel. Out of curiosity, I submitted samples of my work to a few agents, to see what they’d make of my ghostly ramblings. To my
surprise, a couple reacted positively and I signed with one of them. Thus Edward Sieveking the author was born, though I wasn’t known as that back then.

Joe is one of my more avid fans. He’s read all three of my books several times and remembers more about them than I do. In the pub that first night, he was talking about characters and
events that I only dimly recalled. It’s been six years since my first book saw print. I throw myself completely into a novel while I’m working on it, but when it fails to produce any
answers to the riddles that plague me, I publish it, put it behind me and move on.

Joe thought that writers carried each and every book around with them for life. He doesn’t understand how I can spend two or three years working on a story, then forget about the finer
details overnight. He’s a bit disappointed. I’ll have to look through my old notes when I get home and email him a few background scraps and discarded plot lines, restore his faith in
me.

‘It’s freezing,’ Joe says, breathing warm air down the neck of his jumper.

‘I noticed.’ It shouldn’t be. It’s a balmy night outside.

‘Maybe the ghost’s coming. The temperature drops before an appearance, doesn’t it?’

‘Sometimes,’ I nod. ‘I was in a room once where it plunged twenty degrees in the space of a minute.’

‘Did a ghost appear?’ He’s smiling. He’s never seen a ghost. Doesn’t really believe that we’re going to find anything here.

‘I don’t know. I had to leave. It got too cold.’

Joe rubs his hands together. He’s wearing a chunky grey jumper and a duffel coat, but is shivering worse than me, even though I’m only clad in a light shirt. I wouldn’t have
thought that someone with Joe’s physique would feel the chill. He’s as muscular as a wrestler. He looks odd, actually, because he’s not a big man, with small hands and a neat,
oval face.

He notices me studying him and grins shakily. ‘Old wounds,’ he explains. ‘They play up in the cold. You should see me in winter — if I leave the house in less than three
jumpers and two pairs of jeans, I have to be thawed out by an open fire.’

I smile sympathetically. Joe told me about his injuries a couple of days ago, when I asked why he was walking around in the middle of a heatwave fully dressed from neck to ankle. His mother grew
up in Northern Ireland and they used to go back on regular visits. One day they were out shopping. There was an explosion. Joe was caught in the blast. He nearly died. Doctors patched up the worst
of the damage, but his body is a mass of scars and broken skin. He never exposes his flesh in public, ashamed of how he looks. That’s why he grew a thick beard — his lower face is
scarred too.

‘We can leave if you like,’ I offer.

Joe shakes his head. ‘And miss my big moment? Not bloody likely.’ Joe is intent on making this book work. He’s thrilled at the thought of contributing to one of my novels.
He’s determined to assist me in every way possible. He’d probably pump money into the venture if I let him.

‘We could bring in an electric fire,’ I suggest.

‘No good. The ghost shies away from electrics.’

That’s what the owner of the house told us. It’s why we’re sitting by candlelight. Ghosts are shy creatures, loath to reveal themselves. I know from previous studies that they
often choose the most inopportune moments to appear, when you’re fiddling with your camera or pointing it in another direction. Sceptics mock such failures, but they don’t realize how
canny the spirits can be.

Canny
. I’ve picked that up from Joe. The new book is set in London. I need to get to grips with the way the locals speak. I’ll have to make sure I mix with some genuine
Cockneys though — if Joe’s my only reference, I won’t know if I’m using southern or northern terminology.

‘You still haven’t told me what the story’s about,’ Joe comments.

‘I’m not sure yet,’ I tell him. ‘I know some of what I want, but there are still large gaps to be filled in.’

‘But you’re going with the SHC angle, right?’

‘I kind of have to, to keep you happy, don’t I?’ I chuckle.

‘It doesn’t matter a damn to me,’ Joe says. ‘Honestly.’

Joe was the one who got me interested in spontaneous human combustion. He’d read a lot about it and mentioned SHC a few times in emails, told me how scientists were unable to explain how
it happened, discussed a few of the differing theories with me. Intrigued, I started to do some research of my own — I’ve tried to cover every supernatural angle over the years, seeking
answers in the most unlikely and unrelated of places. That research eventually led me here.

‘It’s going to be a horror book, isn’t it?’ Joe presses.

‘Maybe,’ I grunt.

‘Come on,’ Joe groans. ‘You can tell me. It won’t go any further.’

‘You’ll be the first to know. But you have to be patient. Sometimes plots come together quickly. More times they don’t.’

‘It’s really not all there yet?’ Joe asks.

‘No.’

‘So . . . ’ He blushes. ‘If I came up with an idea, and it was really good, and you used it, could I get a credit?’

‘Sure.’

‘Imagine,’ he sighs. ‘An Edward Sieveking and Joe Rickard book. Your name at the top, mine below, slightly smaller print.’

‘Maybe
your
name should be at the top,’ I deadpan.

Joe withers me with a look. ‘No need to be cynical. I know the book’s yours. I was only thinking how nice it would be to –’

‘What was that?’ I silence him with a sharp gesture.

There’s a low rumbling noise. My hopes rise. Joe dashes them.

‘Just a cat.’ He laughs. ‘A tom on the make.’

He’s right, and I’m annoyed with myself. I should have made the connection before him. I’m the one with experience.

We settle back into silence. I think about when I first made contact with Joe, nearly a year ago. I was promoting my most recent book,
Soul Vultures
. It was the first time I’d
released a novel under my own name. Before then I’d called myself E.S. King. (My original agent thought that Stephen King fans might buy my work on the strength of the pseudonym, but in fact
it worked against me and hampered sales.) With
Soul Vultures
and a new agent, Edward Sieveking finally saw the light of day. My first two books,
Nights of Fear
and
Summer’s Shades
, were re-released and did better business second time round. I wasn’t exactly haunting the best-seller charts, but after a stumbling start, I had a definite
feeling that I was on my way.