The House That Jack Built: The House That Jack Built

'Sure.'

'Cool.' He held up a deep tray of components, miniature video cameras and microphones. 'I need to get these up all over the place, and if you help out I'll tell you all about ghosts and why they don't exist. Fair deal?'

She smiled and nodded. 'Sounds good to me.'

'OK.' He handed her the tray while he grabbed gaffer tape and as much cabling as he could carry. 'We'll start at the top and work our way down.'

He marched out of the door with Julia following.

'So…' he began. 'Ghosts… The majority of all supernatural phenomena are easily attributed to something else. We are so attuned to the fiction of spooks and haunting that we leap on it as soon as we see something strange. You see, our brains are built to demand explanation and they'll always opt for the most familiar thing they find, in the belief that familiarity equals likelihood.'

Julia was having to jog slightly to keep up with him as he bounded along the first-floor landing and up the next flight of stairs. 'But we actually saw a woman commit suicide. It was hazy but clear — it was real. It wasn't something we mistook for a woman in a bath; it was a woman in a bath.'

'OK,' Jack replied. 'But that doesn't make it a ghost.'

'What makes you so sure?'

They'd reached the top floor and Jack turned to face her. 'Because I know there's no such thing. I've been dead, and there was nothing there. The only soul I've got was given me by Nina Simone.'

'You've been dead?'

'Oh yeah.' Jack poked around in the tray Julia was carrying, picking out a small camera. 'And now I'm walking around. Doesn't make me a ghost though, does it?'

'What was it?' Julia asked. 'Like a near-death experience or something?'

'As near as you can get. I died Julia, vaporised, ceased to exist. But something — and no it wasn't supernatural — brought me back. Weird stuff happens — and believe me my life has got weirder since — but there will always be an explanation for it somewhere.' He fixed the camera to the roof with gaffer tape, coiled the video cable and dropped it down the gap between the banisters. 'You read any Arthur C. Clarke?'

'Used to watch his programme with my mum, Mysterious World or whatever it was called.'

'There was a lot more to Arthur than that,' Jack said with a smile. 'I shared some wonderful summers with him in Colombo.'

'Of course you did,' Julia replied dismissively.

Jack grinned, not caring in the least whether she believed him or not. He grabbed another camera and walked into one of the empty rooms. 'He wrote three 'laws' over the years, the third of which is probably the most famous, though the others are just as accurate.' He fixed the second camera in place in the far corner and trailed the cable back out of the room with them, dropping it again down towards the ground floor. 'He said that 'any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic'.'

'I've heard that,' Julia admitted as they walked into the next room.

'Yeah, I find myself saying it a lot in this job. That's the problem with the clever things people say, they get quoted so often people forget to pay attention. Think about it, imagine everything we take for granted today and how miraculous it would have seemed a couple of centuries ago. We're always getting closer to understanding, always. Ghosts? Visions? They're unexplained today, but tomorrow they'll be science.'

A third camera in place, they began to head down the stairs again.

'OK,' said Julia. 'I accept the idea that we may have explanations for weird stuff in years to come, but help me out, what could it have been that we saw? It was so real.'

'It was in here, yes?' Jack walked into the spare bedroom.

'Yes.' Julia was embarrassed at how scared she felt walking back into the room, her heart beating faster in her chest and her breath becoming laboured. 'She was right there,' she said, pointing to the bed.

'Which is exactly where the bath used to be,' Jack said. 'When I lived here this was the bathroom. I imagine your aunt changed it after what happened in here.'

'What happened?'

'Your aunt used to keep lodgers, do you remember them?'

That feeling of guilt again. 'I didn't really know her that well. We didn't visit much when I was a kid. You know how it can be with family, you go your separate ways.'

Jack nodded. 'Know what you mean. Well, it doesn't matter. She had lodgers. It helped pay the bills, I guess, stopped her rattling around the place. But… something bad happened to both of them. One, a librarian called Kerry Robinson, slit her wrists in the bath. Right there,' he pointed at the bed.

'So what I saw was just the past? I was watching something that had happened years ago?'

'Exactly. No ghosts, no spirits, just history becoming visible somehow.'

'But how's that possible?'

'That's what we need to find out.'

'But it wasn't a ghost?'

'No.'

'Just an image?'

Jack grinned, fixing a camera in the roof. 'You got it!'

'So when I keep seeing that fat man, he's just an image too?' Julia was beginning to stutter and shake. Jack hadn't realised she'd been this close to breaking, had thought she was getting it together. He never had been much good at reading people.

'It's OK,' he said. 'That's my point, nothing here can harm you. It's just images, that's all, like watching old movie footage. It has no physical presence.'

'But… Rob got wet.'

'What?'

'He tried to help her, the woman in the bathtub, she was right in front of him so he tried to help her. To begin with, he couldn't touch her, his hand kept going through her,'

'That's right…'

'But then, just before she vanished, he got wet … the water from the bath soaked him, it was real… he touched it.'

Jack didn't know what to say to that, had no explanation for how it could be possible. 'OK… So that's… weird, I'll give you that.'

'So they can touch us, they are real.'

'I don't know. We'll find out, though, like I said. That's what we do.'

'But the fat man…'

'Don't worry about him,'

'You don't understand… If he can touch us, he can hurt us…'

Jack suddenly noticed a curious smell.

Julia was pointing over his shoulder.

'He's behind you!' she shouted.

The fist, a sweaty, pink baseball bat of fingers, hit Jack in the small of his back, making him cry out with pain. His leg gave way beneath him as the two fat hands clasped his head, the wet palms oozing over his face, the smell of sweat and sex so strong on them that he felt the urge to gag.

'Run,' he said to Julia through mashed lips, though she hadn't waited to be told, pulling herself out of the room and to the top of the stairs where she began shouting for help. Her words were muted, Jack's ears sealed shut beneath the man's grip, but he could see the force of them in her red cheeks and the spittle that flew from her lips.

He grabbed his attacker's wrists — refusing to even think about the impossibility of such a thing; like he'd said to Julia, answers always came in the end — forcing his thumbs into the tendons, trying to stop the crushing grip and the probing of nails dressed with brown crescents of dirt into his eyes and mouth.

There were bright white explosions in his eyes as the pressure increased. He stamped down with his feet,