Something in the room had scared him so much … he was trying to crawl under the door.’
He’d ventured to intrude, and they’d been happy to include him. ‘Do you believe in ghosts at all?’ a fair-haired boy had asked him.
‘Yes,’ he’d told them solemnly. ‘I do.’
Or something like them.
So they’d told him what they knew about the Burnt House. Different people had subtly different versions; there were elements of urban myth developing already. But he didn’t doubt the truth behind it all. The knowledge seemed to suck his stomach dry.
He’d wondered if the tale they told was giving them bad dreams. Perhaps, with some of them, it was – but they kept on coming back to it. Their growing minds could stretch to fit. But Martin had felt nauseous for hours.
The house looked unassuming in the daytime, despite the sooty marks around its windows. The sheets of board were blank and bland – screening off the gutted depths within. But the first time he’d walked past it, he had sensed the void inside. The place was light-proof: sealed against the day. Tonight, by sallow streetlight, it seemed so full of darkness it might burst.
The sound of footsteps reached him, coming up towards the corner from the south. The railway arch was back that way, an unlit lane beyond it. He turned his head uneasily – then breathed out as he recognized her shape.
She paused at the junction, spotted him, and crossed: relief had put a spring into her step. He didn’t blame her. The Burnt House was the last place you would want to get stood up.
‘Hello,’ said Martin drily.
Lucy smiled. ‘All ready, then?’ Now that they’d met up, she seemed quite perky.
‘Yeah,’ he said, encouraged. ‘Thanks for coming.’ He glanced towards the house again. ‘Romantic, isn’t it?’
Looking, she laughed softly. Eighteen now, with college in the autumn. She had a pleasant, snub-nosed face and short dark hair. Claire – who didn’t know – would be suspicious: naturally. But Lucy was a friend, and nothing less.
He’d met her at a vigil in a local, ‘haunted’ church: the sort of thing he would have jeered at once. Like many of the ghost-watchers, she had a sceptic’s mind: always on the lookout for an easy explanation. And yet she felt the mystery, like he did. She had a real scientist’s awe for that.
He felt he could see eye-to-eye with someone who’d enjoyed The Selfish Gene. He’d heard about the Burnt House and had called her. He didn’t want the group along, with all their paraphernalia. Their vigils were too organized. They made the dark too safe.
‘So what are you expecting?’ she had asked him.
‘To see if something’s in there. To get close.’
She’d hesitated. ‘We’ve nothing to record it with.’
‘Maybe not,’ he’d murmured. ‘But we’ll know.’
They went in round the back way, under cover of the over-grown garden. The back door had been forced before, presumably by squatters. It occurred to him to wonder just how long they’d stuck it out. A night, perhaps. Or maybe less than that.
The dark inside was choking – like a foretaste of extinction. He flicked his torch on quickly and played it around. The kitchen was bare, its walls begrimed, but the damage here was minimal. The seat of the fire, for once, had been elsewhere.
A foul smell still lingered in the air. The stench of stuff corrupted by the flames.
Grimacing, he looked up towards the ceiling. The plaster and paint had cracked like a drought-ravaged field. The light-fixing was gone, the flex protruding. It hung in the penumbra of the beam. He moved the light away, and glanced at Lucy.
‘Okay?’
‘I’m fine,’ she murmured calmly.
He led the way in deeper, hearing brittle cinders crunch beneath their boots. The fire had swept the front room and the hall. The walls looked black and oily in the beam; there were traces of a pattern in the rags of wallpaper. The ceiling had collapsed, exposing skeletal charred wood. The ruin of an easy chair still squatted in the corner.
Lucy had her own torch out: she shone it up the stairs. The gloom up there absorbed the light completely.
‘It started up there?’ she asked – almost whispering now.
He wet his lips and nodded. ‘In the bedroom.’
The glow of her torch slid down onto the staircase. ‘Reckon it’s safe?’
The stairs looked fairly dodgy, but he wasn’t sure she’d meant them. ‘Let’s … just wait for a bit.’
‘And see what happens?’
He waited for her to turn her head; then nodded grimly. ‘Yeah.’
She shrugged. ‘Is it all hearsay, then? Or has anyone actually seen it … heard it?’
‘Well, one of the girls claimed she heard something knocking on one of the window boards, when she was running past one night. She always runs past the place, she says.’
‘Could have been anything, then. Or anyone.’
‘That’s what I thought. But one thing’s for sure, she’s scared of something. They all were, underneath their smiles.’
‘And one child was killed in the fire here, right?’
‘Right. About a year ago, I think. But there’s more to it than that … or so they said.’
She clicked her torch off and came back into the shell of the front room. ‘Oh yes? You didn’t tell me that.’
‘It isn’t nice,’ he muttered flatly.
‘No …’ she said. ‘I don’t suppose it is. Well, you’ve obviously been saving it, so better tell me now.’
He let the torch beam sink, and pool between them.
‘This is what they said, all right? The little boy who lived here kept having bad dreams. Someone was coming to get him, you know the kind of thing. Anyway, one night he wakes up screaming: says that someone’s in the bedroom, running fingers through his hair. So his mother comes, and gets him settled down. Then half an hour later, he’s screaming again. So she goes to him again. And it’s a demon, apparently. A demon keeps appearing in the room. She gets him off again. And then, on her way to bed, she decides to look in on him … and when she gets to the door, and touches it, it’s hot.’
‘Oh, Jesus,’ Lucy whispered.
‘So she opened it, of course she did, and the fire was just let loose. She and her husband got out with severe burns. The boy died in his room.’
She stared at him; then brushed her mouth, as if to wipe a sour taste away. ‘Bloody hell.’
‘Yeah.’
‘Any … cause for the fire, do they know?’
‘Not that I’ve heard. Could have been an electrical fault … or something.’
‘Or something. Yeah.’ She looked up at the ceiling. ‘So what do they reckon is haunting here? His ghost? Or … whatever might have killed him?’
‘Maybe both.’ He paced around; then looked at her again. ‘My dad told me a story once. A legend of King Arthur, ’cause he’s into all that stuff. They were caught in some place, his knights and him – besieged by burning ghosts. And when the ghosts were stabbed, they lost their shape, becoming fiends and ashes.’
Lucy’s smile was wry enough; but her shudder didn’t look entirely faked. She watched as he unstuffed his bag and spread a tattered blanket on the floor. They both sat down. She’d brought her Thermos flask.