‘Then you make them stop it,’ Matt said to Larry.
‘What they’re doing isn’t a crime.’ He turned to Bob. ‘But you can’t stop us from watching the house from outside. From being out on the street while it happens.’
Joyce started complaining about that as well. Spouting some bilge about it messing up the spectral vibes, but then Rachel suddenly spoke and said, ‘Why can’t we just let him watch the house? Just to be safe.’
‘Fine,’ Bob said. ‘Fine. Stand outside, but you leave us alone to do our work, speaking of which … we need to get a wriggle on getting the equipment upstairs.’
‘Upstairs? You’re not doing it in the dining room again?’
Bob shook his head, ‘We’re doing it in her room, right where she died.’
‘We follow the heartache,’ Joyce said.
‘Rachel?’ Matt put his hand on the bannister. ‘You could come with us right now. And be safe. We’ll find Kassy.’
She shook her head, and her odd, tiny hair bunches bounced and swung. She had a look in her eye like resistance was beyond her now, that his asking her to leave was a luxury she couldn’t afford, so that all that was left was participation and fear. Looking at her face, all made-up and weird, troubled him no end. She had climbed on a ghost train, but couldn’t lift the security barrier up any more; and she’d never be able to get off until it reached the deepest rooms, the darkest corners.
‘Just watch the house, will you?’ she said, trying to smile at him. ‘Keep an eye on us, from outside?’
He nodded, ‘I’ll be a shout away.’
‘Just you wait.’ Bob walked forward, ushering them both away with his hairy hands. ‘After tonight things are going to be much, much better.’ Bob stood on the doorstep, making sure they were leaving.
Halfway down the path, as Barley Street was turning fully dark, he looked across the street at a gaggle of children who were walking with plastic buckets, dressed as pirates and monsters.
Larry whispered, ‘Bit spooky that. Knowing your mum’s name.’
‘I mention it in my book. She probably just read that part,’ Matt said angrily, a little breathless. ‘Big wow.’
‘Then why are you so upset?’
‘I’m not …’
Larry raised an eyebrow.
‘It’s just this sort of thinking … it’s dangerous. It twists people’s minds and gets their hopes up.’ He shook his head. ‘It’s bullshit, Larry. It’s cruel bullshit.’
Matt stared at the park, as the kids headed off. He could just about make out the curve of the hill where Rachel said the rabbit had danced, and beneath it was the thick spread of night shadow that contained the gallows tree. His mum was standing under it, her mouth just a hole of blood, and at her shoulder what looked like a tall shadow standing behind her, father-shaped, slinking its arms around her belly.
He looked away and turned back to look at the house, just in time to see something beyond Bob’s folded arms in the doorway. Rachel’s ancient white trainers and tight yellow ankle socks disappeared up into the gloom of the landing. Then Bob stepped back and the door to Barley Street slammed itself shut.
‘Trick or treat!’
A squeaky little girl’s voice came suddenly from his right. He turned to see a skinny white shape standing under a white sheet, shaking out her bucket. Her fingers looked black and dirty, nails packed with soil. There was nobody with her. She said it again, and her eyes flashed beneath the torn holes. ‘Trick or treeeaaaat, mister?’
He turned away and walked to the car.
Matt and Larry didn’t talk much as they drove. His mind was too jumbled to know what to say anyway. So he pulled out his phone and tapped some words into Google.
Menham Vaults Child Abuse Scandal
A rack of results flipped up and he scrolled through a few. Clicking on one from a local history website. An article appeared, with pictures.
Menham: Town of Tears by David Locke
The phone felt heavy in his hand.
He scanned the pages, filled with grim photographs of the ‘scandal-ridden’ children’s home. He scan-read a few paragraphs and confirmed that yes, these historic cases of abuse did indeed happen down in those vaults.
Into which Rachel and her friends dumped her little sister, remember. For a laugh.
The thought of that, of Holly locked down there, was one of those things that made him look up from the phone now and again just to see the shops go by. It was all those photos of the kids’ faces that did it. Morbid and hollow ghouls, barely into their teens and a few even younger ones too. There were shots of them showcasing the neglect side of the abuse. Kids with hefty cheekbones and sunken sockets. They didn’t look world famine level, but it was enough to make it clear to any social worker or passing milkman that these kids had barely eaten. But it was the several grainy black-and-white shots in what seemed like an endless scroll that really turned his stomach. Of naked boys lying in pools of their own filth, some curled up, embryonic in a corner, hugging stick knees to stick ribs. Genitals blurred out. Dusty concrete floors, and crumbling brick walls, curved into arches all around them. Scraping their shoulders as they huddled against them.
There was a shadowing around the edges of the pictures too, which told a story in itself. These shots were taken in full dark. The only light in the vault was from the flash. Eyes squinted painfully at the light. They were all turning into Morlocks down there.
He shook his head and let his thumb bring him perhaps the grimmest image of them all. He brought the phone close to his face, squinted at a detail on a metal door, then noticed in the next shot Locke had blown that part up because he’d noticed it too.
Fig 1. Fingernail scratches on the north door.
Hundreds of them.
Matt looked away and whispered, ‘Jesus’ and was surprised at how it sounded
