Sker House (24 page)

“Not that different from modern alien abduction, when you think about it.” Dale offered. “Perhaps the phenomena – people being taken and returned – is the same, but how we perceive it has changed.”

“Smart thinking,” Lucy said as another crash of thunder shook the house. This time, the thunder was accompanied by a startling white flash which illuminated the entire room for a fraction of a second, catching everyone in freeze-frame. Beneath the table, Champ whined. “So we can safely assume that fairies or aliens, or whatever they are, are bad news?”

“That would be fair,” Rolly said. “To be respected, not abused. They represent nature, and that is a powerful force indeed. This storm we are currently experiencing is just one example. But do you know the most worrying part?” Dale and Lucy shook their heads. “The most worrying part is that... if we can use the tree as another analogy... you never know how deep the roots go. Or how widely they spread. They are hidden under the ground, you see. The same can be said of true evil. It's subversive, doing most of its work unseen. That is what I meant when I told you it lurks, lad.” Old Rolly cocked his bushy white mono-brow in Dale's direction.

“So what does it mean when you fall off one? A tree, I mean?” Lucy asked.

“That, my dear, means that you should stop climbing trees.” The table erupted with laughter. But the laughter soon faded into uncomfortable silence. “Just out of interest, do you know what kind of tree it was that you fell off?”

“Sure.” Lucy said. “It was an oak.” All at once she realized what that meant, and her jaw dropped open.

Old Rolly smoothed his beard with a wrinkled hand covered with skin like parchment and smiled. “In that case, it's probably lucky that you did fall off. And luckier still that you found your way back to Sker. Who knows what might have happened to you otherwise.”

Chapter 25:

Car Trouble

“You stop here, Iz,” Ruth said as she and her daughter approached Sker House's main entrance. “I'll run up and get the car started. No sense in both of us getting soaked, is there?”

“No mum.” Izzy shifted nervously on her feet, and Ruth read the pleading expression in her eyes.

Hurry up and get me outta here!

Ruth felt it too. Sker House was never the most pleasant place to be, what with the seclusion, the history, and the weird going's on. But it was especially bad tonight. A thick cloak of despondency seemed to have descended upon the place. Maybe it was something to do with the storm. All that energy in the air puts people on edge.

As she hurried up the path toward the waiting vehicle, there was a huge crash of thunder. The storm must be right on top of them. The thunder was quickly followed by a flash of forked lightning directly above, so bright it lit up the nearby sand dunes like an incendiary device. For a split second Ruth felt as if she were running for her life through a battlefield, whilst all around her her comrades were being cut to pieces by bullets and flying shrapnel. In some faraway place there was an ominous low rumble that sounded too much like distant gunfire. Ruth gritted her teeth and pulled her jacket over her head.

When she reached the car, she stopped. The rain lashed against the side of her face as she fumbled the key into the lock, opened the driver's side door, and slid in behind the wheel. Needing no second invitation, Izzy started running down the path as Ruth slipped the key into the ignition and turned it. The dashboard lights flicked on and the engine purred into life. Depressing the clutch, Ruth slipped the car into gear, checked her mirrors, just in case, and prepared to release the handbrake. And then, it died. Not just the engine, but also the dashboard. Inexplicably, horrifyingly, everything cut out at once.

“Shit!” Ruth rarely cursed, but felt that in this situation it was justified. She turned the key again. Nothing happened. Nothing at all. She couldn't even muster a whimper. Izzy arrived and plopped down in the passenger seat, her face a picture of anxiety as she wiped her face in her sleeve. “What's wrong, mum?”

“Damned if I know. Bloody thing won't start.”

“Did you put petrol in?”

“'Course I did. Yesterday. You were there, remember?” Seeing her daughter's discomfort, Ruth's maternal instincts immediately took over. “It probably just needs a couple of turns, that's all. P'raps the engine got wet or something. It's proper chucking it down. It'll be fine in a minute.”

But even though she turned the key several times, the engine still refused to turn over. Eventually she was forced to concede that there was something seriously wrong with their ticket home. “You stay here, Iz,” she said with a sigh. “I'll nip back in and get us some help.”

“Who in there's going to help us? Did a qualified mechanic check in while I was getting changed?”

“Well, what else can we do?” Ruth sighed. “You want to stay here in the car park all night? Or do you want to walk home?”

“Neither, really,” Izzy replied. “I was thinking we could just leave the car here and get a taxi. Sod it.”

“There'll be no chance of getting a cab this time of night. Not on a Saturday, and definitely not in the rain. They'll all be busy running around taking drunk people home from the pubs.”

“Yeah, but we can try.” Izzy was already scrambling in her bag for her phone. It was never very far away. She found it and flipped open the cover. It was one of those Hi-Tech Beam-Me-Up-Scottie Phones, as Dennis used to call them. She dialled a number from memory and Ruth heard it ringing the other end, but nobody was picking up. “What kind of bloody taxi service is this?”

“A busy one,” Ruth said.

“Okay, then. We'll walk it, and get a taxi back in the morning.”

“Walk home? Are you mad? The village is miles away. And have you seen the weather out there, my girl? We'll both drown before we get home!” As if to emphasise Ruth's point, there was another crash of thunder and a jagged fork of lightning split the sky in two.

“I don't care. I'd rather drown than stay here. Or there,” Izzy jerked her head in the direction of Sker House, as if she couldn't even bring herself to look at it.

“Yeah, well, lets see if any of those gentlemen in there know anything about cars before either of us does anything stupid, shall we?”

Suddenly Izzy grabbed her arm. “Wait!” she said. “The RAC! We could call them, and then just wait it out. Don't they give women on their own priority or something?”

“But I'm not on my own, am I? You're with me.”

“We'll just tell them you're alone. I'll go hide in the bushes while they fix it if it makes you feel better.” Izzy was pushing buttons on her phone again. “I'll get the number off the internet. Give me a minute.” Then she frowned.

“What's wrong, love?”

“Bloody battery's dead. I must have forgotten to charge it. Weird though, it was okay a minute ago. I thought it had a full charge when we left the bar.”

“No worries. Use mine,” Ruth offered as she hunted through the contents of her bag until she found her own phone. It was easily twice the size of Izzy's flash little model and as thick as a sandwich. The sheer size of the thing was actually one of the reasons she didn't want to upgrade. There was a reassuring heaviness about it, and its bulk meant it was easily located in a crisis such as this.

She pressed the ON button and waited. Nothing happened. “That's funny. My battery seems to be flat as well.”

“Both our phones, AND the car?” Izzy said in a
you cannot be serious
tone. “How can that happen? This is like a bad horror film. Maybe one of us can run back in the house and put some charge in one of the phones. Just enough to make a call. I brought my charger.”

“There's a power cut, remember? ” Ruth said, stuffing her useless phone back into her bag. “That's plan A out of the window, then. I'll go put plan B into action. And if that doesn't work there's always plan C.” Ruth opened the car door, pulling her hood up over her head.

“What's plan C?”

“I don't know yet. Let's just hope we don't need a one, shall we? Lock the door behind me.” Ruth slammed the car door shut and turned to face the hulking mass that was Sker House. Lock the door behind me? Why had she said that? They were alone out here. It didn't matter too much, as Izzy didn't question the advice. Ruth heard the whir of the central locking even above the deafening cacophony of noise as she stepped out into the storm.

Chapter 26:

Into the Dark

“So did you find a home for the key?” Lucy asked.

The landlord visibly flinched, as if the words were physical blows. “What?”

“The key Dale found in our room today. The one he gave to you earlier.” At the mention of his name, or more likely at the reminder of the bollock he had dropped, Dale shifted nervously in his seat.

“Oh, that key. No, not yet. But I'm sure I will.” Machen flashed a smile and returned to his dinner.

“You know, I was thinking,” Lucy started hesitantly. “Maybe it fits one of the doors on the top floor. You know, one of the locked rooms,” she suppressed a shiver as she was reminded of the night before and the incident in the corridor. The key had been playing on her mind, and she was certain it had a role to play in proceedings.

Machen stopped chewing and looked puzzled. “Locked doors on the top floor? That's impossible, you must've dreamed that part.”

“How come?”

“Because unfortunately, locks are usually the last things to go on doors, so none of them on that floor got fitted with any before them lazy bloody foreigners up and left me in the lurch, did they? Most of them rooms don't even have doors, let alone locks.”

Suddenly the moment of realization dawned on the landlord, happening so slowly it was almost painful to watch. “Hang on,” he said. “When did you go up there?”

Damn it!

Lucy knew she should have kept her mouth shut about the key. Almost got away with it as well. Now she was in danger of digging a hole for herself she would never be able to climb out of. Good job the landlord was more than a touch forgetful and half-way crazy. Still, she needed a plausible excuse, and quick. “Last night. I got... lost,” she scrambled. “Went up there by mistake while I was trying to find our room.”

“Weren't looking for
my
room, were you miss?” Old Rolly interjected, a playful smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. So there was life in the dirty old dog yet.

“Maybe if I were a couple of decades older,” Lucy winked, glad of the opportunity to deflect Machen's question.

Unfortunately, it didn't work.

“Hang on. You got lost? How could you get lost? This isn't the Heaton. Hilton, rather. Bit of a liability you are turning out to be, aren't you...”

“Lucy,” she finished the sentence for him. Could the man really still not remember her name? It wasn't like there were a hundred guests to keep track of.

“Right okay, Lucy.” The landlord nodded firmly, making an obvious effort to lock the name in place. “Liability, yes. Liability Lucy, we should call you. Falling out of trees, getting lost. You should be more careful around the place. You might get yourself hurt one of these days, like.”

If this was a bad movie Liability Lucy may have construed the warning as a threat. But the statement was more likely a genuine attempt to preserve her welfare on health and safety grounds. The last thing a struggling business needs is a potentially expensive compensation claim. “Yeah, I suppose I am coming across as a bit scatty,” she smiled. “I'm usually more on the ball than this, honestly. I don't know what's wrong with me this weekend.”

“A bit out of sorts, are you? How so?” asked Old Rolly, leaning across and placing his leathery, liver-spotted hands on the table.

Lucy risked a glance at Dale. How much information should she divulge? Something told her not to mention making contact with spirits using Dale's Dictaphone. At least not until the lights came back on. “Well, apart from the getting lost and falling out of trees, I could have sworn I saw a woman watching us from an upstairs window yesterday afternoon while we were walking on the beach. Plus, I haven't been feeling too well. I feel... I don't know, drained. I just haven't been feeling myself.”

That last comment, of all things, got Old Rolly's attention. “What do you mean by that?” he asked. “You feel like you're somebody else?”

“Almost, yes.” Now Lucy thought about it, that was
exactly
what it felt like at times. She watched the old man's reaction closely. He remained as stony-faced as always, his skin paper white in the candle-light. Something stirred in his eyes, but he said nothing.

“Well don't worry about it too much, is it?” Machen chipped in. “Even the best of us make mistakes, don't we?”

“Oh, I'm sure I'm not mistaken about the room upstairs,” Lucy said assertively. “It was definitely locked. Wasn't it, Dale?”

“I can't really remember. It was dark and I had other things on my mind. Everything happened so fast. But there's an easy way to settle this.”

“And what might that be?”

“A field trip,” Dale continued. “It would only take a few minutes for us to nip up there and find out what the score is.”

“You mean you want to go upstairs? In the dark?” The landlord looked absolutely terrified.

“Yeah, why not? There's not going to be much else to do tonight by the looks of things.”

“No. Absolutely not.” Machen said firmly. “What if someone trips over something and decides to sue me? It's dangerous up there, you know. Especially at night.” He was still shaking his head when he drained the last of the Jack Daniels from his glass and refilled it.

“Why is it more dangerous at night?” asked Dale.

“Because it's dark, isn't it? Einstein.”

Maybe it had more to do with nerves than anything else, but Lucy couldn't help but laugh out loud at Machen's brutal put-down. For a moment Dale was shocked into silence. Finally he said, “We'll be careful, don't worry. You don't even have to come if you don't want to.”