Dusk, page 1
Copyright 2025 Blackwych Books
All Rights Reserved
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, events, entities and places are either products of the author's imagination or are used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual people, businesses, entities or events is entirely coincidental.
This book uses British English spelling.
Kindle edition
First published in August 2025
by Blackwych Books, London
Night is falling and London is about to be plunged into terror. As Patrick and Judy Schnitzler arrive in the city to search for their daughter, who ran away from home, they have no idea that they're about to be dragged into a nightmare from which there might be no escape.
Patrick and Judy soon split up so that they can cover more ground. Patrick soon thinks he's found a clue, and he finds himself at an abandoned warehouse that hides many secrets. By the time he understands the true horror lurking in the warehouse's darkness, however, will he be too late to get away?
Meanwhile Judy is lost in the streets of the city. She soon encounters a strange and enigmatic young woman who seems to know her way around the city. Heading toward the river, they witness something hideous emerging from the water. Just how many ghosts are there in London, and what happens when they all emerge at once?
Dusk is the first book in the Haunting of London series, a collection of stand-alone but loosely linked horror stories set over the course of one ghostly twenty-four-hour period in the city.
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Dusk
(The Haunting of London book 1)
Chapter One
Ribbons of rain blew through the evening air as, far below, a segmented metal snake raced across the English countryside. From a couple of hundred feet up, this metal snake looked like nothing more than a silent though unusual juggernaut threading its way along the line, but from half that distance the distinct carriages of the beast were easier to pick out – and from twenty or thirty feet up, the roar of the engine and the rumble of the wheels broke through the constant hiss of a gathering downpour.
On this rainy night, the 17:36 Taunton to London Paddington service wasn't too far behind schedule.
Around five miles outside Reading, the train raced past a large open cemetery on the left. Thousands upon thousands of gravestones stood dotted about in silence, bearing the brunt of the rain just as they bore the sun and sleet and even snow throughout the rest of the year. The scene looked calm enough, not betraying the writhing bodies buried deep in the ground – many of which were no doubt spinning at some real or imagined insult. The train was gone in a matter of seconds, quickly leaving the cemetery far behind, although a few minutes later a second cemetery briefly sprang up on the right, this time arranged around an old church that stood mostly neglected on the outskirts of a village. Soon this too was gone and a set of old barns – one of which had at some point had its roof burned away – could briefly be seen on the edge of a larger town that swiftly swallowed up the greens and yellows and browns of the fields.
The trees were darker now. This particular forest was still being fed by a battle that had taken place there five hundred years earlier, and by the bodies of the dead soldiers that had been churned into its soil.
From a distance of a few feet, anything quick enough to soar alongside the train – an eagle, perhaps, or more realistically in this part of the world a starling or a long-tailed tit – would have seen scores of figures sitting behind rain-tracked windows. Some of these figures were wearing headphones, some were leaning back to contemplate their destination, a few were moving along carriages on their way to or from the toilets or the restaurant car, and one or two were peering out at the countryside that flashed past. All were being gently shaken by the rhythm of the locomotive. And toward the front of the train, at the rear of the first carriage, a man's face could just about be seen glaring down at the parallel set of tracks, staring with undiminished concentration even as the movement of the train rocked him continuously.
Small rivers of rain were blowing down the glass as the man's eyes watched the silver rails, although his mind was far away as he thought of the task to come once he finally reached his destination.
***
“Patrick? What do you think? Patrick -”
She nudged him hard in the ribs.
“Patrick, are you listening to me? Damn it, why is the signal so bad? I swear I need a new phone. Patrick -”
Again in the ribs.
“Patrick!”
“Hmm?” he replied, finally turning to his wife. “What is it?”
“Look!”
She thrust her phone in front of him, revealing a map with a jagged central section shaded in red. Staring down at the screen, Patrick felt for a moment as if there was no possible way that he could be expected to understand.
“This is an area covering about half a mile around Paddington in every direction,” Judy continued, “with a few of the less likely streets discounted. I know it's a bit of a guess, but I've been researching where people go when they're in this sort of situation and... I can't be sure, but it seems like a good place to start searching. What do you think?”
He opened his mouth to reply – just as the train bumped over a set of points – but for a few seconds he really couldn't think of anything to say; this happened to him a lot, even in times of supposed emergencies: he often wondered how other people were able to race ahead with their words and thoughts, whereas he always preferred to contemplate the matter at hand before offering a judgment; that was a quality that he often tried to instil in his patients, albeit without much luck. Unfortunately, he knew that -
“Patrick, can you say something?” she hissed, interrupting his train of thought again.
“It seems reasonable,” he suggested cautiously, hoping that this was what she wanted to hear. “If you think she'd have stuck close to the station, that is.”
“Why wouldn't she?”
“I don't know.”
“Unless she had a specific destination in mind – and I'm still sure she didn't, because she doesn't know anyone in London, at least not as far as I'm aware – then she probably would have stayed on foot. I've been reading forums where people talk about what it's like to be in her situation, and the most likely thing is that once she hit London she would've tried to find somewhere to stop and get her head straight. And probably somewhere to refuel, too.”
“Refuel?”
He looked at her and saw the fear etched into her drained features.
“You mean eat?” he continued. “And drink What's with this refuel nonsense? You sound like one of those idiots on the internet. What do they call them again? Influencer? Effluencers, more like.”
“She can't have much money with her but she has a little,” she went on. “It depends how long she was planning this nonsense and whether she actually saved anything up. She'll be trying to conserve it as much as possible, but I'm sure she'll try to find something. And that would've been hours ago because of the head-start she got on us, but now it's getting dark and there are hostels but... I don't think she'll go to one of those, not yet. She'll have some other plan in mind.”
“I -”
“Going to a hostel means admitting what's really going on,” she added breathlessly. “It means joining the others.”
“Others?”
“Others like her,” she went on. “Patrick, don't you remember what I told you? The official figures state that there are around five thousand homeless people in London but most people think the number's much higher. But if there's one thing I've learned from reading these forums, it's that when they arrive in the city, most people are convinced that somehow they're going to be different. That they're going to be okay. There's a kind of reality check that they all have to go through. A shock.”
She tapped at her phone again, switching from the map to a forum, to another forum, to a charity page and then to one of the forums again. Every time she touched the screen, her fingernail tapped against the screen and made Patrick flinch.
“People who've been on the streets say it can take a while for the truth to really set in,” she muttered. “She's such a smart girl, I'm sure she's got a plan, but they all think that. It's over the ensuing days that reality really starts to hit, and that's when they're at their most vulnerable.” She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear as she switched again from tab to tab, as if she truly believed that one of the webpages had to contain a breakthrough – if only she could focus on one for long enough. “Of course it's looking like bad weather tonight,” she added, “so she'll need somewhere to shelter. She'll know not to get wet.”
“Hopefully.”
“Hopefully?” She turned to him. “Is that all you've got to say?”
“No,” he replied, shaking his head as he glanced outside and saw another cemetery flashing past, this time one nestled next to some kind of large industrial estate. The light outside was already fading fast. “I just -”
“It says here that the first forty-eight hours are crucial,” she stammered, speaking so fast now that she was almost tripping over her own words. “That's when someone's still new to the streets. Quite often they panic and change their mind, so it's entirely possible that she'll just get a train straight back home. I've told Mum to keep an eye out.”
She tapped at the screen again, and somehow the tip of her red-polished nail now seemed to be scratching the surface more deeply, threatening to almost break through to the data and pixels below.
“But it can go the other way,” she continued. “They can get drawn further and further into that world. Patrick, what if she bumps into the wrong person? She's smart but she's also not very worldly. What if she bumps into someone who thinks they can use her?”
“Like Fagin?”
“What?”
“Well -”
“Someone who'll offer her a place to stay,” she explained, “and some food, and that's how they'll lure her in. And then, before she has time to realize what's going on, suddenly she won't be able to leave. Or she'll get hooked on drugs. And that can lead to crime and prostitution, and a downward spiral that can end up with...”
With tears in her eyes, she swallowed hard and tapped again and again at the screen.
“We have to focus on that forty-eight-hour window,” she added finally, sounding as if she was still trying to convince herself that their plan was going to work. “That's the crucial phase. If we can find her before that's over, we still have a chance to persuade her to come home. There doesn't have to be any irreversible damage. Statistics say that if someone's found within forty-eight hours, they're highly likely to decide to return home but... but after that, Patrick, they can get lost. They can disappear into the city and sometimes they're never heard from again.”
Sobbing now, she set her phone down and pulled a pack of tissues from her handbag. She was starting to break down, unable to get any words out as tears streamed down her face faster than she could dab them away.
“I'm sure you're right,” Patrick said, watching her for a moment before turning to once more look out the window. Now the countryside had been entirely swallowed up by buildings, and in that moment – although he didn't know it – the train was crossing the threshold and entering London on its way to Paddington. “She'll be out there somewhere.”
Chapter Two
He'd forgotten how much he hated London. The noise, the commotion, the sheer mass of people moving in every direction – and above all the foul stench, a combustible mix of sweat and urine and oil and dirt. And as he stood just beyond the ticket barrier, having moved out of the way of an automated cleaning robot that whirred as it went about its business, Doctor Patrick Schnitzler looked around and wondered just how much of this mess was actually necessary.
How many of these people could be safely euthanised with no meaningful effect on the world? Half? Three quarters? Ninety-nine per cent? If he'd learned one thing from long therapy sessions with his clients, it was that most people were just pointless, worthless animals that wouldn't be missed at all.
“I don't know what was wrong with it,” Judy said, hurrying over to him while still holding the slightly bent train ticket she'd struggled to feed into the barrier. “It should still have gone through, shouldn't it?”
He turned to her, but in that moment he could think of nothing to say. He watched as his wife fumbled to put the damaged ticket into her purse; there was no reason to keep the damn thing, but he simply couldn't be bothered to have another argument with her, especially not when she was already in such a terrible state.
“Okay, so where should we start?” she asked finally, sounding out of breath again as people hurried past on either side. “Patrick? Did you think about where we should start looking for her?”
“I -”
“I can't decide whether it's best for us to stick together or split up.”
“Well -”
“I suppose we need to cover as much ground as possible, but we also have to be observant. Patrick, do you think she's still wearing that red jacket? You know the puffy one she had on when she left? Do you think she's still wearing it? Because if she is, she'll be much easier to spot.”
“I -”
“Of course she's still wearing it,” she muttered. “Why wouldn't she be? She'll be keeping everything she can in case of a cold night. So that should make her easier to spot, right? Don't you think?”
“I -”
“So I suppose we can afford to split up,” she added, turning and looking all around the bright station concourse – as if she half-expected their daughter to be miraculously spat out by the crowd. “That's probably the best approach, isn't it?”
She turned to him again.
“Patrick, can you say something?” she continued. “Can you tell me what you're thinking?”
“I'm thinking we should drop this case at the hotel,” he told her, glancing down at the hard-shell suitcase they'd hurriedly packed at home before racing to the train station. “It's no good hauling it around like this. It'll only slow us down.”
“How far's the hotel from here?”
“It's -”
“I don't want to waste any time,” she went on. “The hotel's near Euston, isn't it? I remember you saying that. Why did you book a hotel near Euston when you knew we'd be arriving at Paddington? That doesn't make any sense, Patrick. Weren't you thinking straight? Isn't Euston quite a long way from here?”
“It won't take long if I grab a taxi,” he told her.
“We need to be efficient,” she added as more tears filled her eyes. “Patrick, every second we waste is another second she's lost here in the city. It's another second she could meet the wrong people and get dragged into all sorts of horrible situations.” Reaching out as if she needed to steady herself against him, she gripped his arm as she once again looked all around. “Anything could be happening to her right now,” she pointed out, and now she looked a little paler. “Patrick, I can't stop thinking about all the awful things that could be happening while we're just standing here. We -”
She paused, retching slightly, before turning – and in that moment she let out a pained gasp before vomiting all over the floor, splattering the shoes and bags of several passersby in the process.
“What the hell?” Patrick muttered under his breath, as onlookers pulled away from the mess that even now was starting to add to the foul stench.
“I'm sorry!” Judy gasped, turning to him with streams of vomit running down her chin. She turned and saw people staring at her, while a couple of station attendants were already hurrying over. “I'm so sorry!” she sobbed at the crowd. “It's my daughter! She ran away from home and we don't know where she is! Please, you have to forgive me! It's my daughter!”
***
“Platform two for the 20:03 service to Bath Spa,” the latest announcement said, as Patrick stood next to a cafe at the station and watched a woman cleaning up his wife's vomit near the display boards. “Calling at -”
Sighing, he turned and looked toward the women's bathroom. Judy had disappeared into there a few minutes earlier, clearly on the verge of throwing up again. She'd somehow become even more pale, with dark shadows under her eyes, and her constant sobbing had drawn a huge amount of attention. Eventually he'd managed to clean her up with some napkins from a sandwich outlet, and then he'd ushered her toward the bathroom while insisting that she needed to finish the job herself before they could go anywhere else. And all the while she'd looked and sounded so utterly pathetic. She had been, quite frankly, a massive embarrassment.
As he saw an elderly lady emerging from the bathroom, he told himself that his wife might well be in there for quite a while.
Turning, he looked across the concourse again. He could think of at least a hundred things he'd rather be doing in that moment, and a hundred more that would be a better use of his time, but everything had happened so fast. Within minutes of finding Grace's note, Judy had begun frantically shouting about the need to get the next train to London. Sure, every available clue suggested that Grace had caught a London-bound train a few hours earlier, but Patrick had still tried to convince his wife that they should wait.
