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Contents:

Darkness Unlocked

Silence the Screaming

Infection

Darkness Unlocked

   “Do you have something to say?”
   The question was aimed at Suzie, who was chatting to the woman next to her. She stopped abruptly when she realised this.
   “Er..no.”
   “OK. Then you’ll have taken in everything I’ve just said and know all of the safety tips.”
Suzie looked sheepishly back at the instructor. She nodded unconvincingly.
   “Right then. If there’s no other questions...” The instructor waited for a response and continued when there was none. “Remember if you see something just stay calm. No matter what you’ve seen on TV or films, ghosts are harmless. They can’t interact with the physical world.”
   That’s because they don’t exist, Suzie thought to herself.
   It was a sentiment that Suzie’s friend, Jean, knew she held, but wanted her to come on one of these ghost hunts anyway.
   “It’s all about the camaraderie,” she said. “Heightened emotions breed a closeness with one another that can’t be rivalled anywhere else.”
   It was something Suzie had heard from her for years until, one drunken evening, she finally agreed to go along with Jean to the Mid Summer Ghost Hunt that Jean frequented every year and where she insisted she saw ghosts.
   It was held in a country manor miles from anywhere. The manor was, of course, abandoned and had been the centre of quite a few folklore legends over the years. Mostly to do with missing people.
   Tonight was the night for Suzie to find out how true those legends were.
   Of course she knew they weren’t, but Jean was her best friend. What’s a little self deception between friends.
   “OK. Join up with your partners and let’s go hunt some ghosts.”
   The group of seven eager ghost hunters and Suzie shuffled themselves into their partnered groups and filed out of the coach onto the overgrown front drive of the manor house.
   The house was barely visible in the almost pitch black of the night. It was five after eleven and a full hour after Suzie would normally be tucked up in bed. But some how she was genuinely excited about the coming experience to feel any tiredness.
   Not about finding ghosts, but about putting her scepticism to good use. Pointing out what made an eerie sound or how something may have moved or how something was a trick of the senses. As much as she didn’t want to hurt her friend she did want to show her how to logically look at the world. How to decipher the unexplainable.
   Suzie waited outside of the coach while Jean put her thin jacket on and tied back her dark shoulder length hair. There was a bit of a chill in the air, which seemed odd to Suzie as when they left her flat it was one of the warmest evenings of the year. Must be because they were out in the country, she thought.
   Jean led the way once she was ready. Two of the groups were already in the house, torches playing in the darkness. They were the third to enter and there was another drop in temperature.
   “Oooh! That’s a good sign,” said Jean.
   “It’s a sign that the walls retain the coldness from outside and as it hasn’t been lived in for years hasn’t had a chance to warm up,” replied Suzie.
   Jean smiled.
   “Suzie, Suzie, Suzie. Open your mind. You’ll be surprised at what you may discover.”
   “You know me Jean. My mind is always open to the realities of life.”
   Jean smiled and hooked her arm in Suzie's.
   “Well come on. Let’s go find those realities.”
   Both women moved further into the house carefully avoiding the clutter on the floor. Jean insisted it was made by the playful ghosts, but Suzie knew it was more likely to be squatters or wildlife from the nearby woods.
   The groups in front had disturbed the dust and the specs glistened in the torchlight. It caught in Suzie's throat and made her cough.
   “That’s probably the ghosts being mischievous,” said Jean. Suzie didn’t bother replying.
   Jean took them to the Drawing room. She was getting very excited. More excited than she had a right to be, thought Suzie.
   As soon as they entered Jean quickly closed the door and jammed a chair from the desk under the handle.
   “What are you doing?” said Suzie.
   Suzie's torch illuminated Jeans face and her eyes sparkled. Not from the light, but from her excitement.
   “I don’t want anyone else coming in here,” she said. “I’ve found something and I don’t want anyone else to see it.”
   Suzie looked confused. She thought, if anything, Jean would want to show everyone what she had discovered.
   “What is it?”
   “Come over here.”
   Jean took Suzie's hand and virtually dragged her over to one of the three half empty bookcases. It was the one behind the desk.
   “I found this on one of my early visits. It was as though I was guided here. Guided by an invisible hand. And it turned out I was.”
   Suzie sighed in her mind. Had Jean toned down her ghost excitement, only until now to reveal how far she was deceiving herself?
   Jean reached up to a book on the shelf just above her head and levered it forward. There was a slight rumbling in the ground as part of the bookcase moved backwards to reveal a pitch black passage behind it.
   Suzy smiled.
   “Now this is getting interesting,” she said. “Where does it lead to?”
   “Let me show you.”
   Jean led the way in to the darkness which seemed to swallow up the torch light as they went.
   A noise from behind her made Suzie jump and turn round. The torch light caught the bookcase section closing shut.
   “Don’t worry. There’s a lever to open it back up.”
   Suzie's heart was pounding, but it calmed a little when her torch light fell upon the lever to the left of the door.
   “Hope there’s no more surprises like that,” she said.
   “Ohh. There are surprises. Definitely not like that.”
   The way Jean said that last sentence creeped Suzie out even more.
   The passageway was even colder than the Drawing room. Down to the bare walls, no doubt, thought Suzie.
   The cobwebs were thick in here and spiders scurried away from the light as it found them.
   They came to a flight of steps that took them down under the house. A door presented itself at the bottom of the stairs. It was an old wooden door. No decoration or ornamentation adorned it. It was just a plain wooden door with a plane handle. The handle wasn’t anything Suzie had seen before. Probably the original from when the secret passageway was built.
   Jean pulled down on the handle and pushed the door open.
   An even colder air brushed passed them that made Suzie shiver.
   “Did you feel that?” said Jean. “That’s them.”
   Suzie was poised to say it was just a breeze, probably from an air vent or something, but something in her seemed to disagree with herself. Or at least was open to another explanation.
   It took her back and she hesitated at the entrance as Jean walked in. Shaking her head she forced herself forward.
   As was usual for the house the room was in darkness. The torches picked out the plain white walls that had dusty wooden shelves at various levels around them. Bits and pieces were littered across some of the shelves, but most were empty. The room looked like it had been used for storage at some point during the houses lifetime.
   It was relatively small compared to the Drawing room, but compared to Suzie’s flat it was a good sized bedroom.
   Directly opposite the door they had just entered was another door of similar build. Jean didn’t stop and headed straight for it.
   Suzie’s apprehension was building up, but she didn’t know why. Every logical molecule in her body was telling her they were just in a secret area of the house and unless there was a murderer on the other side of the door she had no need to feel the way she did.
   Jean pushed the second door open and an eerie glow spilled out from it.
   “Hello, my dear. I see you’ve brought a friend.”
   Suzie froze.
   The voice sent a coldness through her body that shocked her heart and stopped it beating for a split second. She took a sudden intake of breath when it started again.
   Something inside her was screaming for her to turn and run for her life, but she was rooted to the spot. Anchored as though held in place by an invisible force.
   “Yes. This is Suzie. She wanted to meet you. She has a hard time accepting some realities so I said I would bring her here.”
   Jean was having a conversation with someone in that room. Someone that was hidden by the door.
   Suzie wondered if this really was a murderer. Had she made fun of Jean’s superstitions for too long? Had Jean had enough and planned this whole thing to kill her in secret.
   As soon as it entered Suzie’s mind it left just as quickly as she dismissed it as absurd.
   But there was someone in that room and it made her feel uneasy. Forcing herself forward she approached the door.
   The glow was a strange light. It didn’t get brighter the closer she got to the door. It just remained a constant gentle ambient light that bathed the surroundings. It felt as though she wasn’t getting any closer to the source.
   “Be gentle with her. You will be a bit of a shock to her system,” said Jean.
   A laugh rattled through the room that made Suzie shiver again.
   “Unlike you, my dear. You were very accepting as soon as you saw me.”
   There was a strangeness about the voice. About the accent. As though it didn’t belong in this time period.
   Suzie finally reached the doorway and almost stopped at the threshold of the room, but she continued her momentum and entered.
   The light revealed every detail of the room. It was about twice the size of the one they had just left. There were desks and chairs covered in dust and shelving and cabinets against the walls piled up with rotting books and paperwork.
   The musty smell hung heavy in the air from the damp walls. The floor was hard under foot, something that was carried over from the previous room.
   All of these details were ignored by Suzie as her attention was drawn to the bright figure over by the far wall.
   Of the many things she had heard or read about ghosts, this figure fitted the bill.
   The apparition floated in the air and glowed a pale white light. It was half the figure of a man. The bottom half was just wispy tendrils of white light. The top half was a man dressed in an old fashioned suit with a bowler hat. A long twisty moustache protruded from his top lip.
   “Pleased to meet you, Suzie,” it said.
   A smile suddenly began to spread across Suzie’s face.
   “You’ve got to be kidding me,” she said.
   She began laughing and when she calmed down started looking round the room.
   Jean was confused. She expected some sort of reaction from her friend, but not this.
   “What are you doing?” she asked.
   “Looking for the projection unit. I didn’t think you’d go to these lengths to try and convince me, Jean. I thought we’d look around the house for a few hours and then you’d come up with some excuse like the moon was in the wrong place or the ghosts wouldn’t reveal themselves to non-believers.
   But you’ve really pushed the boat out. Even introduced a secret passageway.”
   She continued her look among the books and papers on the shelves.
   “What do you mean? Jasper is real.”
   Suzie stopped and turned to look at her friend.
   “Jasper! Really! Jasper the ghost!”
   Suzie burst out in raucous laughter and continued her search.
   Jean looked at Jasper in despair.
   “I can assure you I am real,” said Jasper.
   “No you’re not,” said Suzie through her slowly diminishing laughter. “You’re someone, probably somewhere in this house dressed in your fancy dress outfit, who’s being projected into this room. Are you one of the other ghost hunters or has Jean hired an actor?”
   “Suzie! I would never do that,” cried Jean. “This is real. This is all real. I’ve known Jasper for about five years now. I found him the first time I came on this particular hunt.”
   Suzie began to push the books and paperwork on the floor during her search. She was finding it harder to find than she thought.
   “It’s true,” said Jasper. “The first moment I saw her I knew she would accept me. She wouldn’t try to remove me from existence like so many others have tried. So I guided her to the secret passage.”
   Suzie continued without replying. She was on to the third bookshelf now.
   She started coughing as the damp took hold of her throat. As she did something else occurred to her. Maybe she was hallucinating. Maybe the spores in the air were having some hallucinogenic affect on her mind. That’s been known to happen before.
   Before she settled on that explanation she continued with her search. The projection was the more likely explanation.
   Finishing with the shelves she turned her attention to the ceiling. Maybe it was coming from above.
   Shining her torch above the apparition she thought she had found something, but it turned out to be just a surface crack in the plaster.
   “Suzie! Stop it! You won’t find anything because I’m not deceiving you,” said Jean.
   But Suzie continued searching. And when she was done with the ceiling she began on the floor.
   “I must say. You’ve got it well hidden,” she said after giving up the search. “So, come on. Where is it?”
   “I told you. There is nothing hidden. This is all real.”
   “Come on, Jean. Ghosts are not real.”
   “You can see the evidence yourself. You’ve found no outside source that you usually say is evidence against ghosts. Why don’t you believe the evidence you can see.”
   “Because they don’t exist!”
   Suzie was getting annoyed with Jean’s insistence. Even though she hadn’t found any physical evidence, the only explanation, other than a hallucinogen, was an outside source.
   Wasn’t it?
   “What would you like me to do to convince you?” said Jasper casually moving around the room.
   This took Suzie back a little. She had never thought about what would convince her that ghosts exist. It was always about proving that they didn’t. What would convince her?
   Before she could come up with a suitable experiment Jasper said,
   “How about a demonstration of what we are supposed to be good at. Scaring people. After all we have a house full of them.”
   Suzie thought about it. She shook her head.
   “You could still be a projection. Those people wouldn’t know the difference.”
   “OK then. I’ll make them do something that they wouldn’t do normally. After all, that’s one of the reasons Jean comes here every year.”
   Jean nodded with a weird smile spread across her face. In the low light it looked like an evil smile to Suzie.
   “OK,” said Suzie. “I get to pick the group.”
   “OK. And you can witness it all on this screen here.”
   Jasper pointed to TV screen on a shelf that somehow she didn’t acknowledge during her search.
   “It’s something Jean set up a few years back. Found it easier than following me around. She can’t go through walls like I do.”
   Jasper smiled a smile that revealed a dark empty mouth.
   “Who is your pick?”
   “The middle-aged couple with the matching stripy jumpers. If anyone deserves a scaring its those two.”
   Jean grabbed a remote control that was sitting next to the TV and switched it on. The bright light of the screen flooded the room until Jean pressed a button to reveal a night-vision camera picture of one of the rooms. It was empty. She kept selecting buttons until she found the room with the couple in.
   “Ahh! The Master bedroom. OK. Back in a moment.”
   Jasper disappeared into the ceiling while Suzie and Jean watched the screen.
   “You won’t be able to see him on the screen. Camera’s can’t capture ghosts. But you’ll see the effects.”
   Surprise, surprise, thought Suzie.
   She knew what to expect. Any little thing, a trip, a sudden movement of a head, Jean will claim it was done by Jasper when in reality it would be just every day happenings. No outside influence required.
   They watched the two people on the screen carefully studying something on a picture. The torch light was a bright funnel attached to the picture.
   There was no sound, but both of the peoples heads spun round together and Suzie could see the man mouth,
   “What’s that?”
   “There he is,” said Jean.
   Suzie didn’t say anything. Nothing happened that convinced her Jasper was real.
   Jean’s movements made Suzie look at her. Jean was in a state of high excitement with expectation written all over her face. Suzie frowned and turned back to the screen.
   There was a sudden movement of the torch as the man started to bash it against his face.
   The shock sent a wave throughout Suzie's body and she shivered. Her mouth dropped open and her eyes widened. She couldn’t believe what she was witnessing on the screen.
   And it didn’t stop.
   The man's face was all bloody. The woman was trying to hang on to his arm to stop him, but she wasn’t strong enough. He pushed her away and continued pummelling his face.
   Suddenly he stopped. He was clearly out of it. His eyes were closed and he was limp, but something was keeping him up.
   He turned to his wife and raised the torched and proceeded to bash it into her skull.
   Her defence was useless against the relentless attack and soon she was motionless on the floor.
   But the man didn’t stop. He stooped down and crushed his wife's skull, her brain squashed and spilling out on to the floor.
   He then stood up and continued on his own head until, finally, he crumpled to the floor.
   Suzie's face was a mask of horror. She wanted to turn away the very moment it all started, but something kept her watching. Something macabre and scintillating at the same time.
   She was stunned into silence.
   Jasper returned and smiled at the look on Suzie's face.
   “That’s exactly how Jean looked when she first saw what I could do,” he said.
   But Suzie didn’t hear him. She was still processing what she had just seen. More importantly, how she reacted to it.
   “I think it will take her a little while to take it all in,” said Jean.
   She reached into her shoulder bag and pulled out a small bottle and two small glasses.
   “I brought this along. I know I could have done with it when I first experience it all.”
   She filled the glasses up with the Whiskey and gave one to Suzie who took it while still staring at the screen. The two bodies were motionless on the floor.
   “Bottoms up.”
   Jean downed the drink in one and Suzie did the same, screwing her face up with the taste.
   “So are you convinced now?” asked Jasper.
   Still Suzie stared at the screen.
   “I...I...I...”
   “You need another drink,” said Jean as she filled Suzie’s glass up again.
   Suzie finished it in one go again and was starting to feel the effects. It loosened her tongue.
   “I don’t know what’s more surprising. Ghosts being real or how I reacted to what happened. I want to be disgusted with myself, but I can’t.”
   Jean beamed.
   “I know. It’s surreal isn’t it. I couldn’t believe it myself the first time I saw it. It’s like a bitter sweet taste in your mouth. Part of you wants more, the other part screws up your mouth and wants to spit it out.”
   Suzie looked at Jean. She saw her in a whole different light now. She wasn’t that wacky, easily fooled woman who she had known since they were kids. She was the person who opened her eyes up to a whole different world. And not just one filled with ghosts, but one that has unlocked her dark side. A side rightly expelled from society, but one that can never be locked away again.
   “I want to see more!”

The End