Sam: A Novel Of Suspense

OTHER
BOOKS BY IAIN ROB WRIGHT

The
Final Winter (Silk Raven Associates, 2011)

Animal
Kingdom (Grand Mal Press, 2011)

ASBO
(Silk Raven Associates, 2012)

The
Peeling Novella Series (Iain Rob Wright, 2012)

Sea
Sick (SG Horror, 2012)

This
book is dedicated to my fans and horror-lovers anywhere.  You are the best
bosses I have ever had and I love working for you.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Sam (main Story)

SAM

By Iain Rob Wright

---

CHAPTER ONE

“He’s
a scam artist, a conman.”

Tim
Golding faced his accuser and sighed.  The silver-haired gentleman was large
and overbearing, but Tim wasn’t about to stand there and be insulted.  “Sir, it
was your wife that contacted
me
.  If you’d like me to leave then I
will.  To be honest, I’d rather be home watching
The X Files
anyway.”

“No,
please,” said the man’s wife.  “Help us.”

Tim
looked at the woman and could see she was emotionally battered.  After ten
years in the business you could detect the bullshitters fairly easy, and this
woman wasn’t spinning him a line. She was genuinely terrified (either that or
she was one hell of an actor).  The charcoal bags beneath her eyes were proof
enough to confirm her story of sleepless nights. 

“Okay,”
Tim said to her.  “Why don’t we take a seat and you can tell me what’s been
happening.”

The
woman’s face almost crumbled into sobs then, but somehow she forced a weary,
thin-lipped smile.  She led Tim into the dining room, where a set of
leather-backed chairs lay tucked up against a polished oak table in the centre
of a plush, beige carpet.

Tim
slid a chair out and plonked himself down on it.  The silver-haired husband did
the same, but made no secret of his cynicism, huffing and puffing with every
breath and rolling his eyes like marbles.

Tim
rolled his own eyes. 
Okay, asshole, I get it.  You think I’m a charlatan
and you’re a tough guy that won’t be scammed.  If only you knew the truth,
buddy…

Tim
clasped his slender hands together on the table and gave his most reassuring
smile to the frightened woman.  She’d taken the seat opposite Tim and was
staring at him intently.

He
started with an obvious question.  “When did this all start?”

She
was just about to answer when the lights in the room flickered.  The woman let
out a whimper, but the husband was quick to offer an explanation.  “Dodgy wiring. 
Happens all the time.”

Tim
nodded and then turned back to the man’s wife.  Eventually she began her story,
in a voice that was sickly and timid. “It started about a month ago,” she explained,
“when our dog, Buster, brought something home.”

Tim
glanced around the room.  There was no evidence of a dog.  No family pictures
featuring a lovely pooch or pet bed in the corner.  In fact the room was devoid
of anything aside from the table and chairs.   “You have a dog?”

The
woman shook her head solemnly.  “Not anymore.”

“Stupid
mutt got himself trapped in our fishpond,” the husband added.

Tears
welled up in his wife’s eyes, but she did her best to go on with the details. 
“He was a little Jack Russell.  We were always on at him to stay out of the
pond but he would never listen.  Must have dived in it a dozen times, but
always got back out okay – just stinking like a swamp. Then, a few weeks ago, I
went into the garden and…and…and I found him dead at the bottom.  His collar
had caught on a tree root sticking through the pond’s lining. He couldn’t get
his head back above the water.  He must have really suffered.”

The
woman started crying.  Tim handed her a handkerchief from the breast pocket of
his scuffed leather jacket.

“Oh,
nice,” said the husband.  “Is that one of your props?”

Tim
ignored the man.  “So tell me,” he said to the wife.  “What was it you said
your dog brought home the week before that?”

“A
bone.”

Tim
raised one of his eyebrows.  “Was it human?”

“Of
course not,” the husband answered.  “Don’t you think we would have reported
something like that to the police?”

“You
could have, for all I know.  Until your wife called me, I didn’t know a thing
about you.”

The
man scoffed.  “Yeah, I’ll bet.”

“It
was a chicken bone, I think,” the woman said. “It was small and sharp.  I
didn’t think anything about it at the time, but then everything started
happening.”

Tim
mulled it over. 
If it had been a human bone then it could have caused a
poltergeist to haunt the house, but not from a chicken bone.  Never heard of a
malevolent chicken spirit before – at least not this century.

Chicken
bones were often used in Voodoo rituals, but Tim had never seen any evidence of
it this side of the Atlantic.
 
“So what was the first…occurrence?”

The
woman took a breath and seemed to shudder.  “It was during the night while we
were sleeping.  It was about 3AM and I suddenly opened my eyes, wide awake.”

“What
woke you?”

“The
light in the bedroom was on.  My husband was still fast asleep, snoring. I’ve
never known him to turn the light on during the night so I assumed it must have
been left on by accident.  I got up and went over to the light switch to turn
it off, but then realised that the hallway light was on as well.  We always
turn off all the lights before going to bed, so it was all very strange.  I
walked through the house and found that every single light had been switched on
– even the lamps.”

“Like
I said,” the husband chimed in.  “Dodgy wiring.”

Tim
nodded, but was beginning to get tired of the man’s short, clipped tone.  An
educated guess suggested he was some sort of mirthless military man.  Tim
didn’t have a great deal of respect for overly macho gorillas, so decided to
focus on asking more questions.  “So did anything else happen that night?”

The
woman shook her head.  “I was freaked out, of course, and didn’t sleep another
wink, but I still didn’t think too much of it right at that moment.  It was the
next day when I really knew something was wrong.”

“Go
on,” said Tim.

“Well,
the whole house is like the Arctic Circle as you can probably tell.  Most times
I can see my breath in front of me.  You can feel how cold it is, right?”

Tim
nodded.  It was indeed chilly.

“I
turn on all the heating but nothing seems to do any good.  One night I was
absolutely freezing, so I decided to take a bath to try and warm up.  But, when
I…”  A short sob escaped the woman’s lips.  “Sorry, just give me a second.”

The
husband butted in.  “Daft mare thinks she saw blood coming out the taps.”

Tim
took a deep breath and made some mental notes. Then he addressed the husband,
making sure to look directly into his steely blue eyes.  “Did you see this
yourself, sir?”

“Did
I?  Hell.  There was nothing but a bathful of water when I got there.  Told her
it was probably just rust from the pipes she’d seen.  This is an old house.”

Tim
nodded.  “With both dodgy wiring and plumbing, it would seem.  Okay, so how
long after that did your dog die?”

“A
few days,” the wife answered, now weeping without restraint.  “There were some
other weird things that happened up until then but nothing like what happened
afterwards.  We buried Buster in the garden, but that night I was woken up
again.  All the lights were on, just like they had been before, but this time
there were noises outside, too.  It was Buster barking in the garden.  I know
it sounds crazy, but I swear it was him.  I know my own dog’s bark and it was
definitely him.  I ran into the garden in just my underwear.  I was so excited,
but when I got there he was…hanging.”

Tim
leant forward against the table and paid close attention.  “Hanging?”

“From
the top of the old fern tree behind the pond.  He was hanging by his collar.”

“Sick
bloody kids,” the husband spat.

Tim
wasn’t convinced.  “This is a pretty nice neighbourhood, isn’t it?  Do you
usually have a problem with youth crime in this area?”

The
man shrugged his shoulders.  “There
are
no nice neighbourhoods anymore. 
You get troublemaking kids everywhere.  Police don’t do a thing.”

“Okay,”
said Tim, avoiding a political debate.  “I think I should take a look around. 
There’s a good chance that this is all a sick joke by somebody, but I won’t
know more until I conduct some experiments; starting with this room.”

“Here
we go,” said the husband.  “The theatrics are about to begin.”

Tim
once again ignored the insult.  He took off his trainers and climbed up on to
the dinner table.  Once his footing was stable, he pulled a small leather pouch
from his back pocket.

“What’s
that?” the husband asked.  “One of your new-age gizmos?”

“No,”
Tim explained.  “It’s a set of screw drivers.  I’m going to take a look at your
‘dodgy’ wiring.” 

The
light fixture had been replaced with a modern studio light that coiled around a
rail in a semi-circle.  It was aluminium and easy to unfasten.  Once the
fixture was loose and hanging by its wiring, Tim poked a finger inside.”

“Be
careful,” said the woman.  “The electricity is still on.”

Tim
tapped the switch wire and the lights flickered.  He prodded it a few more
times and the lights flickered once again.  He reattached the fixture and
hopped down off the table.  He turned to the husband and smiled.  “You have a
loose switch wire.  I would suggest an electrician.”

The
silver-haired man seemed confused, as if he had expected some fanciful
explanation that would result in Tim charging him money.  That wasn’t the type
of game Tim was playing though.

The
next thing Tim did was reach into his pocket and pull out a spool of cotton
thread.  He unravelled a length of about 10cms then held it in the air,
observing which direction it dangled towards.  The thread rose sharply to the
north side of the room, which meant the breeze was coming from the south side
of the room.  Tim walked over to the wall and knelt down beside the skirting
board, holding out his palm to sense for air currents.  It didn’t take him long
to spot a hairline crack running a length of about 30cm along the base of the
wall where it met the floor.  He held his fingertips in front of it and felt
the cold air flowing in from outside.

Tim
stood up and turned around.  “You have a crack in the masonry.  This time of
year it’s letting in an icy draught.  A good plasterer will sort that out for
you.”  He clapped his hands together in punctuation.  “Right, shall we go take
a look at that bathtub now?”

The
husband and wife seemed dumbfounded. They led Tim upstairs without a word
spoken, and showed him over to the second door on the right of the hallway. 
The light was already on inside and crept out beneath the doorway.