‘Strangely missing …’ Matt muttered into his beer. ‘Call the exorcist! Someone’s lost a key!’
He read on.
Saturday, November 3rd, 21:25 (approx.) MW (code for Mary Wasson, according to the side panel) heard cracking glass from kitchen. Milk missing from fridge. Bottle found in cupboard with top smashed off. Glass shards missing.
He flicked again.
Sunday, November 4th, 02:00 (approx.) All of family woken in the night by loud crashing downstairs. MW and RW (that was the older sister, Rachel) went down to check and found a sofa in the middle of the room, nothing else broken. RW’s Audio cassette player and tape missing. Family pack of cards missing. MW’s work shoe missing.
One more.
Wednesday, November 7th into 8th, 2 incidents.
Timeframe unknown – roughly 8-10pm. RW, JF (Jo Finch) & SE (Steph Ellis) report animal apparition on roof of house. ‘A very tall hare, thin and standing. Hind legs. Demon?’
02:00 (approx.) HW (Holly Wasson) woke in the middle of the night. Reported hearing footsteps in the attic above her room. Too scared to go back to sleep. Insisted on light being left on. HW dead by morning.
He paused from reading those last three words in bold and looked out of the patio doors. Amelia’s bedroom looked out on the garden. He could see her yellow curtains glowing softly, sleeping with her light on just as she’d asked.
Breath skimmed across his lips as he leafed through the pages. He counted sixteen sides of this stuff. He sighed and slid it to the side. He’d check the rest later.
There were cuttings of local newspaper reports too. Local stuff, with punchy titles like ‘Poltergeist Havoc for Local Family’. Both stories showed Mary Wasson, looking all sad and emo into the camera, but still pretty glam. In one she held a broken teapot, right into the camera. Thrusting it like they’d told her it was a 3D shoot. The story told him little he didn’t already know, except for one little titbit. The house had become something of a local attraction following the reports, with curious residents gathering outside, even knocking on the Wassons’ door in the hope of catching sight of the ‘evil spirit’. And one particular detail struck him.
Local churchgoers have avoided the house, calling it an ‘opening for evil forces’. They have gathered to pray against it.
He thought of those quirky church folk from this morning, out on their prayer walk. Hovering at the school gates. Of that American fella with the goatee, holding his palm out to Matt, in prayer. He pulled out a yellow pad and scribbled a note with his pen.
Stuff to tell Larry.
1) Church connection?
In the other piece, the picture was Mary standing like one of those miserable Victorians in old photographs. Only her hand wasn’t on a moustachioed husband. It rested on a hefty leather sofa, which she’d said had been ‘tossed over like a kiddie’s toy’. He wasn’t really sure how she could say that, since she said she hadn’t actually seen it being upturned. For all she knew, the poor old spook had spent half the night holding its poor back and puffing out ectoplasm trying to shift the bloody thing.
A smile of self-amusement grew on his face as he set the papers aside and clicked his Glass music off. Then he pressed play on the video player and his smile vanished like the flick of a switch.
Holly Wasson gazed out at him, blinking slowly while wind rattled The Cabin.
He looked over his shoulder and saw a fat moon hanging from the back window.
She was at a dining-room table, hands gently clasped in front of her. Like she’d been told that was how polite girls sit when they are being interviewed about haunted houses. The walls around her were painted green and a dark wooden chest of plates loomed behind her. In the background, he could hear the muffled voice of Bob Hodges chatting. Telling her just to ‘sit tight’ as he rigged a microphone up. ‘Won’t take a sec.’ The edges of the picture had that fuzzy VHS look, which made him feel nostalgic. Washed-out colours, very little detail. Every now and again a white tape line would ripple up the image, when the tracking went out.
He watched her sitting there, waiting. As he was waiting.
She was a skinny nine-year-old, surrounded by pictures of animals on the walls. Pictures she would glance up at, now and again, as she waited. Her long blonde hair curled into little pools on the giant doily that covered the tabletop. Whenever Bob apologised for the delay, she looked off camera at him and smiled. It was crooked, with the typically uneven teeth of a kid. But it seemed genuine and likeable. A tiny dimple marked one cheek and she wore a T-shirt with a cartoon kitten on it, sitting in a ribboned basket. A little babyish for her age, unless she was being ironic – do nine-year-olds even get irony?
Despite the occasional smile, Holly would often just look off into the corner without any smile at all. There was a roundness to the shoulders and a body curl inwards that told a story.
She wasn’t symmetrical enough to wind up in some catalogue or cutesy calendar – all straight teeth and laughing. Rather, Holly was the sort of little girl you’d see walking home from school, hefting a bag on her back like it was full of bricks. Squinting up into the sun and smiling at the possibilities of the world – just as other kids her age pushed right past her loudly talking, just not to her. He knew this not because he had been one of these types of kids at school, but because he’d seen plenty. Every now and then he’d even stuck up for them, but not always. There were moments that he liked to forget, when he had stood back and let class humour trump basic human rights. But then at the time, being funny seemed so genuinely important.
You can tell who gets
