The Ghost House (2 page)

By the time Will arrived at Jenna White’s house the normally quiet street was thriving with people. Earlier, the arrival of Jake in the patrol car, after the call had come in for a missing teenager, had set a few curtains twitching. But now neighbours were standing in front gardens chatting away to each other and several people had remembered that they had left something in the boot of their cars and were trying to look inconspicuous, but failing miserably, as they loitered at the rear of their vehicles.

A reporter from the local paper parked opposite Will, who growled under his breath at him: he was a right pain in the backside. His speciality was making every copper he interviewed look like an idiot. Will was well aware that someof his colleagues didn’t really need much help in that department, but most of them came to work to help others – protect and serve the public and all that malarkey – so the papers should have been on their side. Will was just biding his time until the reporter stepped over the line and gave him a reason to arrest him, show him the hospitality of the custody suite and see how he liked bed and breakfast listening to the regulars: drunks wailing and being sick or drug addicts coming down from their highs.

A handful of youths, dressed as if they had starring roles in the Rocky Horror Picture Show, were hanging around by the gate of 9 Walton Path. Jake appeared at the front door and lifted his hand to wave at Will, who was out of his car and ducking inside the front garden before the reporter got the lens cap off his camera.

‘Glad to see you mate, the word has spread like wildfire: bloody Facebook. And by the look of that lot over there they have her down as being abducted by a transvestite alien,’ said Jake.

Will closed the front door behind him and followed Jake through to the kitchen. The house was neat and tidy and the sweet smell of vanilla filled the air from a reed diffuser on the hall table: it reminded him of his Nan’s home. She had lived in the next street along and, as the queen of baking, her house had always smelt like this. Will felt his heartstrings tug at the sight of the crumpled woman staring at him expectantly.

‘Mrs White, I’m Detective Sergeant Will Ashworth. I work in CID. Jake has told me about Jenna. You say she has never done anything like this before?’

‘Never. She has never run away from home before or stayed out and not told me where she was staying. We did fall out because of her constantly arguing with her sister and I told her she was grounded until next weekend, but where would she go with no money? Something has happened to her, I just know it has. As soon as Sarah told me Jenna hadn’t slept in her bed I knew then. She is such a kind girl she wouldn’t worry us like this.’

‘I need to ask you some questions and if you could give me as much information as you can it will help us search for Jenna and help Jake to fill out the missing persons report.’ Will glanced at Jake who had found something interesting to look at on his boots. ‘I know you told my colleague that Jenna hasn’t got a boyfriend as such but you know kids, they don’t always tell us adults what’s going on.’

‘She never mentions any particular boy. I know she has friends that are boys at college but they just hang around together.’

‘Does she have any favourite places she likes to go?’

‘The Abbey. She’s doing an art project for college and has loved it there since she was a kid.’ The woman sniffled into her handkerchief, then stood abruptly and left the room momentarily before returning with a glossy photograph, which she handed to Will.

He looked at the painted face staring back at him and passed it to Jake. He continued with his list of questions – ‘Does Jenna keep a diary? Does she have a computer?’ – to which Mrs White vigorously shook her head.

‘I don’t know about a diary, she may do because she was always writing things down. Her dad bought her a laptop for Christmas; it’s in the dining room.’

Will smiled. ‘That’s great. Would you mind if we took it away to get examined and see if there is anything on it that could give us a clue where Jenna may be? Is it OK for me and Jake to go and take a look around Jenna’s room?’

She whispered, ‘Help yourself,’ then stood and turned to go upstairs. Both Jake and Will followed her. She led them along the narrow landing to the last door, which had a picture of some movie star all the girls were crazy about stuck to it. Jake had no idea what he was called even though he’d watched the film a couple of times with Annie.

She opened the bedroom door and he stared at the assortment of posters on the wall, all were of the scariest people he had ever seen. They checked to make sure there was no sign of a struggle; nothing was out of place, there wasn’t even an overturned cup and there were no bloodstains. The room was neat and tidy, for a teenager, and there was a black sparkly purse on top of the dressing table. Will opened it: there was a five pound note and a debit card. It was obvious that nothing untoward had happened in here, that Jenna hadn’t been dragged from her bedroom fighting.

Walking out he nodded at Mrs White. ‘Thank you. We’ll go back to the station, see what we have and come up with a plan of action. I’ll be assigning you one of my family liaison officers, who will keep you up to date with our investigation and answer any questions you have. They will act as the go-between so you don’t have to worry about trying to get hold of anyone at the station. .’

Will nodded at Jake to follow him outside. He lowered his voice so the spectators couldn’t hear. ‘I hate to admit it but I think you’re right to be worried. I’m forty percent she’s shacked up with some boy or girl nursing off a hangover, but I’m sixty percent positive that something is wrong. It doesn’t feel right. She isn’t one of our usual missing persons, she isn’t known to us, and I did some checks on
Intel
before I came here and there is no trace on the system for any of them. Until today the Whites were just your average family. Can you get an update from whoever is checking addresses and see where they are up to? I’ll speak with the motley crew over there and see what they have to say.’

Jake smiled to himself as Will approached the crowd of Goths. Of all the jobs to get sent to today it had to be this one. He would bet a hundred quid that it wasn’t going to case closed in the next hour.. He hoped that Jenna would turn up soon, tail between her legs and apologetic, but his instinct was telling him that it wasn’t likely.

He had no idea what was wrong with him, one minute he was happy with his rather ordinary existence, the next he couldn’t bear it. The highlight of his life consisted of taking his elderly mother to the spiritualist church every Wednesday; where he would sit and listen to some phony pretend to pass on messages from the dead to the sad, desperate people sitting on the hard plastic chairs waiting for something that might mean it was their turn. His mother was just as bad. She held weekly séances for a couple of her friends and he was sure she made it up as she went along, but it gave him a couple of hours respite from her continual sniping at him.

It had been a month ago now that he had gone for a walk into town and spied the old tin box in the window of the junk shop. Melvyn, the owner, liked to call it an antique shop but more often than not it sold nothing but junk at extortionate prices. He had felt drawn to the box and before he knew it he’d gone into the shop and began to wander around. He hadn’t pointed out that he was interested in the box because then the price would go up by at least twenty quid so he’d browsed for ten minutes and made to go out of the door when he stopped and looked at the box. He leant into the window and carefully extracted it from the rest of the rubbish that was in there. Melvyn had gone to put the kettle on so it gave him a chance to take a quick peek.

It was once ornately painted with a golden pattern around it, now there was more rust than gold and it looked in such a poor state but he felt his heart beat a little faster when he held it. Melvyn was talking very loudly on the phone to someone so he opened the box to look inside: there were some very old, grainy black and white photographs and a couple of letters. He tucked it under his arm and walked to the back of the shop. Melvyn was deep in conversation, the phone tucked under his ear as he stirred the tea bag around his chipped Charles and Diana royal wedding mug.

‘How much do you want for this, Melvyn?’ He was trying his best to look not in the least bothered so as not to arouse his suspicions.

‘Fiver. It’s an antique you know, Victorian.’

‘A fiver? I only want it to keep some air rifle pellets in. I’ll give you four quid.’

Whoever was on the phone took Melvyn’s attention away and he nodded OK to him. He counted out four pound coins and put them on the counter. Melvyn nodded again then pocketed the money and turned back to pour the milk into his tea. He walked out of the shop with the box tucked under his arms and a big grin on his face: today was a good day for him. It wasn’t often he got one over on old Melvyn. He went home and put the tin away in his wardrobe; safe until he had time to look at it properly.

He had been sitting here politely listening to his mother carping on about Edith’s dead husband and thinking how fed up of his life he was. He was sick of being on his own and sick of his mother who was getting more irritating by the day. Then, out of nowhere, came the burning desire to kill someone. Inside, where he used to know nothing but calm, was now a violent torrent of bubbling horror. He didn’t want to just smack someone over the head with a hammer or maybe run them over. He wanted to take a woman into the old mansion in the woods and slit her throat from ear to ear. He wanted to watch the rich crimson tide of warm, sticky blood flow across the pale, milky skin of his victim. She must have the whitest skin so the blood would contrast vividly against it and then he would slice and dice until the monster inside him was satiated and he felt like himself again.

‘Are you listening to me? Edith wants a glass of water and judging by the look on your face you could do with one as well. What is the matter with you? Daydreaming like a fifteen-year-old boy! It doesn’t matter, I’ll get it myself’

He blinked and looked around at the bunch of wrinkly old women staring at him.

‘Sorry, Mother.’

She shook her head in disgust, and a vision of him slicing her throat into a permanent gaping smile made him jump up from the hard, dining chair he was sitting on and knock the small card table she used for the séance onto the laps of the two women.

‘Sorry, ladies.’

He left the room, brushing past his mother as she returned carrying a large glass of water. He bounded up the stairs and into his bedroom slamming his door shut; he then dragged the chair over and pushed it under the handle so the old bat couldn’t walk in on him. Turning on his computer he waited for Google to load. He was a natural at internet grooming – it was so easy to be the perfect person to whoever you were talking to, and he’d surprised himself by the ease with which he had taken to it. He had always been a planner since he was at school but he was also afraid of the black rage which had started to take over and knew that if the situation arose he may not be able to control it and it worried him. He logged into the dating site he had joined a month ago under a false name and typed ‘single women in Cumbria’ hitting the enter button hard. His tongue snaked from his mouth and he licked his top lip, as the pages began to load. He began to search for his next suitable victim to keep Jenna company in the cellar – he didn’t want her to be lonely down there. He paused on a picture of a girl with the palest complexion. A green circle below it showed that she was online and could be messaged.

He typed: ‘Would you like to visit a haunted house?’

Within seconds a reply flashed up on the screen: ‘Yes, I would. Do you know of one?’

Oh yes I do, who would have thought it could be so easy
.

Will returned to the station. He needed to speak to the DI and organise a search. One of the address checks had come up with a confirmed last sighting of Jenna White. The girl who lived there sometimes gave Jenna a lift into college and had driven past her last night at approximately twenty past eight as she turned into the approach road to Abbey Wood. She hadn’t been seen since.

He pushed the numerical code on the keypad to open the door, hoping it was still the right one; they had a habit of changing it just as he would get used to it. He stopped off at the community office to speak to the sergeant and asked him for as many officers and police community support officers that he could spare so they could start searching the Abbey and doing the house to house enquiries at the few houses that were down there. It was a massive area and he was going to have to call in a few favours to get as many people as possible to help out. She could be lying injured somewhere. He hoped that she hadn’t strayed onto the railway tracks that ran behind the Abbey and been hit by a train. There had been a few locals who had met their untimely death due to a high speed Edinburgh-bound train passing through.

His head began to pound the same rhythm as his heart and he swallowed a couple of paracetamol before going up to the large room on the first floor, which was used to hold meetings and large scale briefings. This shift was going to be a long one, he just hoped by the end of it Jenna White was reunited with her family one way or another.

The thunder was easing off with just an occasional rumble in the distance. Annie sat at the kitchen table with a mug of coffee in one hand and the other resting on the book. It had to be the book she had found inside the desk, but there was no way to explain how it got from the imaginary desk onto the floor. To say it was strange was a bit of an understatement. Pulling a tea towel off the back of a chair she rubbed at the thick layer of dust on the front cover. The book was bound in black leather which had softened and cracked with age, she expected the title to say
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
but instead it read
Diary
. She exhaled, unaware she had been holding her breath. Her hands trembling, she opened it and the read the inscription on the inside front cover:
This is the private diary of Alice Hughes
. A chill spread down the back of her neck: the man in the house had been shouting for Alice. The script was beautiful, elegant and Annie wished that she could write like that. For a moment she felt a twinge of guilt that she was about to read someone’s diary. How would she feel if it were the other way around? But it was obviously very old and she doubted very much that whomever it belonged to was still alive.

My name is Alice Hughes, I am fifteen years old and work as a housemaid for Lord and Lady Heaton of Manor House, Abbey Wood, Barrow-in-Furness. I am very fortunate as I was given this journal as a gift from Lady Hannah who told me that, ‘To write is a precious gift that should be used if one has been fortunate enough to be blessed with it.’ It is thanks to Lady Hannah that I can write. She always gave me time away from my chores to sit in the schoolroom with Master Edward and learn whenever his tutor came to give him lessons. I did not like having to spend so much time in Edward’s company for he is so horrid and hurtful to me for no reason, but I do so love to read and write and I suppose I should be grateful that I have been given such opportunities to learn, even if it did mean that Edward would pull my hair, or pinch my arms when the teacher was not looking.

Today has been such a busy day. Lord Robert and Lady Hannah had guests for Christmas dinner and I had to help Cook prepare and serve the food. Both Millie, the kitchen maid, and James, the footman, are ill which meant I had to do all of my own chores as well as theirs. Master Edward was not best pleased when his mother gave me a gift and he scowled at me all day. I am thankful that his Lordship kept an eye on him today for I overheard Cook telling Albert the butler that Edward had got into another fight yesterday. Edward is always so angry. I often wonder why he is that way when everyone is so nice to him.

I overheard Lady Hannah telling the vicar that Edward will be moving to London soon and will be attending a medical school there for he is so clever and bright and well advanced in his studies. I pray every night that he will leave soon and then I will not have to hide from him when he wants to play his silly games. I am writing this by the light of the candle, all tucked up in my bed. I must go now in case he is prowling around and sees the light from underneath my door for he will tease me mercilessly. He is not allowed into the servant’s quarters but this does not stop him for he listens to no one.

This morning I worked so hard I am exhausted. There is to be a party tomorrow night and Lady Hannah wants the house to sparkle from top to bottom. This is all very well but I feel as if I am the only one who is working, except of course for Cook who always works hard.

I do not understand why Edward dislikes me so. I wonder, if I were a boy would he still treat me the same way? A part of me thinks that he is jealous of me but why should that be so. He is rich and his parents love him dearly even though he acts like a spoilt, selfish brat and is so unhappy. He must be to carry on this way. I have nothing, why would he envy that? My mother died last year and I have no other family. I have been living in this house since I was nine years old. I was given plenty of tasks to complete despite my age but I did not mind for it passed the day.

I have been very fortunate that Lady Hannah likes me so otherwise I could have been sent to the workhouse when mother died. But she insisted I was to be kept on as a housemaid and paid a proper wage. I owe Lady Hannah so much I would never let her down in any way.

Today has been such a horrid day; I have never been so scared in all my life. Edward insisted I play a game of hide-and-seek with him. He told me if I did not he would tell his mother that I had stolen some of her jewellery. I would die of shame if Lady Hannah were to think me capable of such a thing for she is like my own mother to me. I had no choice even though I was scared and knew it would all end in tears. I tried to act brave even though I felt sick to the pit of my stomach.

He led me to the kitchen and stood outside the cellar door. He then ordered me to hide down in the dark, damp cellar. My knees began to tremble so much that I could barely take the first step down into the blackness. I looked around the brightly lit kitchen for Cook but she was nowhere to be seen. She was more than likely with her Ladyship discussing the menu for tomorrow night. Edward smiled at the look of fear on my face; he knew exactly what I was thinking. He knew that I wanted Cook to come in and save me from going down into the huge, dark cellar, which I so despise. I tried my best to put on a brave face for I did not want to show him how truly scared I was, because then he would tease me all the more.

I ran down the stairs into the blackness that waited for me at the bottom. I did not know which way to turn and bumped into something hard, hitting my shin and making me cry out in pain. My eyes began to water and I wanted to fall to the floor in a heap and wail. Now I have a big black bruise that hurts if I touch it. I could hear him laughing at the top of the stairs; finally he began to count. Edward must have heard me scrabbling around in the dark like a blind mouse. I had to keep biting my lip to stop myself from making a noise. I finally found a corner to crouch in and I tried to make myself as small as possible. My blood froze when he shouted, ‘Coming, ready or not.’ My heart was beating so loud I thought that it would give away my hiding place. My skin felt as if there were a thousand spiders crawling over it. I had to squeeze my eyes shut and I covered my ears with the palms of my hands, all the time waiting for him to jump out at me from the dark.

When I could no longer feel my feet I tried to straighten up; I do not know how long I had been waiting. I crept from my safe corner and felt my way around as my eyes began to adjust to the darkness. I knew in my heart he was waiting to scare me. I had lost all sense of direction in these vast rooms and did not know where the stairs were: I was lost. A strange noise came from somewhere not too far away and it was then that the tears began to fall as I brushed against something hard and cold. I cannot say if it was my imagination or not but I thought I heard a low, guttural growl and it was then that I started to scream.

Her Ladyship must have heard me because she sent Harold down into the cellar with a candle to light the way and find me. I was so relieved to see him I could not stop crying and I clung to him as he took my arm and led me to the steps and back upstairs to safety. When we reached the top I felt my legs sink from under me. Lady Hannah was standing there, her face a mask of concern. The kitchen had never looked so cosy and bright. Edward was sitting at the table eating warm gingerbread, the smell made my stomach rumble. He smirked at me from behind his mother’s back. Lady Hannah took my arm and led me upstairs to my room to lie down and rest. She told me Edward would be dealt with and as she turned to look at me I saw such sadness in her eyes. I cannot believe how someone so kind could give birth to such a monster.