The loud shout makes me sit up fast, while Raven gasps and goes rigid by my side.

  “Tickety tock. Tickety, tickety tock.” The distinctive sound of footsteps distantly clomping on wood come to my ears.

  “Stay here,” I rasp at her.

  “Don’t leave me.” Her voice is shrill, dripping with fear.

  “Tickety, tickety tock. Where’s my little mouse? Clock’s ticking.” The footsteps sound closer and louder, like they’re on the stairs.

  As Raven whimpers, I grab the flashlight and ease off the bed, but keep the beam switched off for now. My eyes have become accustomed to the darkness, and I don’t want to lose that. Ignoring the protest of my ankle, I move quietly in my stockinged feet toward the door and ease my head around the doorway.

  As quietly as I’d moved myself, Raven’s beside me. She’s got enough sense not to grab my arms, but her hands are flat on my back, as if reassuring herself that I’m there.

  Clomp, clomp, clomp.

  The footsteps are getting nearer.

  “Tickety, tickety. My little mouse, are you ready for me?”

  It sounds like someone’s reached the top step, but there’s fuck all that I can see. As the next footfall sounds, I throw caution to the wind and press the button on the flashlight. My eyes blink, but nothing is revealed.

  Clomp, clomp, clomp. The footsteps are in the hall and coming toward us.

  But there’s no one fucking there.

  Raven’s whimpering sounds in my ears like an animal fatally injured. My heart’s beating loudly in my chest.

  “Tickety, tickety tock. Tickety, tickety, tickety, tock, tock, tock!”

  Although I can see nothing, I push back against the doorway as the footsteps seem to come level with me. I hold my breath as they falter, then pass on, each footfall sounding like it’s being placed deliberately.

  “Tickety tock. Come to Daddy.”

  “Tickety tock. Tickety tock. The mouse can’t win against the clock. Daddy’s here.”

  My eyes open and in the glare of the light, I see the door at the end of the corridor swing open as though it’s been kicked hard. The force makes it bounce back against the doorjamb.

  I push Raven back into the room, grab my cut, my boots, and her trainers in one hand, and with the other I grab hers.

  “Run!”

  Chapter Six

  Dwarf

  It might not be my finest hour, and in normal circumstances, a Marine doesn’t flee. But tonight, there’s no doubt I’ve been faced with evidence of the supernatural. There’s just no other explanation, or none I can immediately think of.

  Voices and sounds might not do me any harm, but if this is a ghost and they can influence the physical as evidenced by the violent opening of that door, I’m not sticking around to see what else they can do.

  Raven’s compliant, and matches my pace without complaint as I leap/hop down the stairs, still needing to favour my ankle, but anxious to put space between us and it, not allowing myself to think a phantom might not be bound by physical rules.

  I head straight for the kitchen and raise that trapdoor.

  “Not down there,” Raven cries out, the first real words she’s spoken since we were awoken.

  For a reason I don’t understand, I think we’ll be safe underground. I come up with the only logical justification.

  “Only one way in and out. Easy to defend.”

  “Ghosts can move through walls.”

  “Then the forest won’t be a barrier,” I counter. “At least down there I can work on the radio.” I may not have had enough rest but now have even more reason to attempt to make contact with the outside world.

  The words tickety tock are still echoing around us, increasing in volume, making my heart thump like it’s about to leap out of my chest. I stab at the keypad with the number I committed to memory earlier, open the door, and push her inside. As I slam the door shut, the sound is mercifully cut off.

  At least Grandaddy remembered soundproofing.

  Leaning back against the door, I pull Raven into my arms. My heart is beating a furious dance, as is hers.

  Breathing in through my nose and out through my mouth, I try to calm down. I’m a practical person. I’ve never believed in spirits or in an afterlife. When you die, you die. Much as I’d like to come back and haunt my enemies, I never thought I’d have a chance.

  While the evidence my previous beliefs might have been wrong has just been left behind us, I’m unable to come to terms with the thought we’ve been chased by a ghost. Now I can hear it no longer, I think I must have been suffering from a hallucination. Maybe there’s some sort of poisonous gas leaking into the cabin.

  Raven’s losing it completely, sobbing in my arms. Her body is shaking, and I think if I were to let go, her legs wouldn’t support her. All my doubts are now gone along with any blame I attached to her, and questions about her sanity. Gas leak or not, no wonder she ran as if the demons of hell were after her.

  It’s exactly what I’d just done myself.

  Was I right? When I can hear something other than the rushing of my blood through my veins, I strain my ears. No repetitions of tickety tock sound down here, and there are no footsteps descending the stairs. Or not yet.

  Hallucination, that’s what it must be.

  “What did you hear?” I rasp at Raven, knowing she’d been woken by something. Maybe it hadn’t been the same thing. When she doesn’t immediately respond, I shake her lightly.

  “Tickety tock,” she cries out. “Repeatedly. And footsteps.” Her hand forms a fist and hits my chest lightly. “You know. You heard it the same as me.”

  Oh fuck I did. Is there such a thing as shared delusions? I shudder, not knowing what to believe. But just in case, I find myself hoping Grandaddy’s prepping included some talisman protecting his bunker against spirits.

  I might have muscles. I might carry a gun. Yet I’d felt fear the likes of which I’ve never known. Being up against a group of insurgents has nothing on what occurred upstairs. At least with a seen enemy, you’ve time to prepare, to understand which tools to use to come out the victor. Against something ethereal, you haven’t a chance.

  I no longer blame Raven for blindly running into my bike. I’ve experienced the same terror as she’d done. And worse, I can’t imagine how dreadful hearing those chilling sounds on her own must have been.

  Now, for the sake of my sanity, and hers, we’ve got to get out of here. There are only two reliable ways of doing that. One is to go down and wait by the road, hoping the right person would stop, assuming, of course, whatever the entity is, it’s confined to the cabin. The other is to get that ancient radio working.

  As the minutes have passed and nothing’s disturbed the silence or come knocking at the door, Raven’s sobs have stopped, and her violent shaking has turned to the occasional shiver. I admit to feeling steadier myself, and at least in a better frame of mind to get working.

  “Know where your grandaddy kept his tools, sweetheart?”

  She frowns. “I’m not sure. But don’t all men have a man drawer?”

  They do indeed. I grin. Taking her hand, maintaining the contact for myself as much as her, I head for the kitchen. After opening a couple of drawers, I see even a prepper can’t avoid such a typical masculine habit. There in the midst of other “maybe useful to keep” shit, I find a couple of screwdrivers, an assortment of wires and some pliers. An electrical tester would be too much to ask for, and of course, I don’t find one.

  Taking my treasures, I make my way to the room at the end of the hallway and angle the flashlight to complement the dim overhead bulb. There I examine what I’ve got to work with. The battery’s probably fucked. The terminals are corroded, so I strip the old wiring away and take the back of the radio apart.

  “Your grandaddy have a storeroom?” I would think he would have.

  Raven thinks for a moment. “He’s got a place where he hoarded loads of shit.”

  “Could you go look and see whether he’s got spare batteries?” In the event of an alien attack or World War Three, I suspect he would have been prepared. Knowing what’s happening and keeping in contact would be the only lifeline he would have had. Therefore, having spares would have been vital.

  When she hesitates, I place my hand over hers for a second. “I’ll be right here. One shout and I’ll be with you.”

  She straightens her shoulders and takes a step back. To give her confidence, I summon up a smile and a confident jerk of my head in the direction I want her to go.

  While she’s absent, I put my mind to the task ahead, replacing the chewed wires.

  She doesn’t take long. Soon she’s back, and as I expected, Grandaddy did indeed stock up with spare batteries. Mindful these must be years old, I’m grateful she’s carrying three of them. Fuck knows what charge they might hold, or whether they’ve got any at all. It would take a hell of a lot more work, but if this doesn’t bear fruit, I might have to find a way to hook the radio up to the mains instead.

  There may be better tools upstairs.

  There might. I shudder at the thought. While I might not like to think of myself as a coward, I don’t want to wander about the cabin in the dead of night. Not when I can’t identify who, or more accurately, what, is up there. Any searching will have to wait for daylight. But who’d blame me? Normally before facing any enemy, you have a good idea of the danger they present, and what weaponry you might be faced with. On this occasion, I have no fucking idea. My Marine training didn’t teach shit about taking on something from hell, or at least, the spiritual world.

  While rationally I can’t accept it, I’m unable to come up with any other explanation as to the origin of the sounds we heard.

  It takes an hour or so of fiddling about, but finally I’m ready to fasten the cleaned-up terminals to the battery. Holding my breath, I press the power button. A satisfied grin comes to my face when a steady red light glows.

  “It’s working.” Behind me, Raven claps her hands, then her arms come around my neck. “You did it!”

  Briefly I squeeze her hands with mine, sharing her pleasure. Step one is indeed complete. Now to see if this thing will work.

  With my phone dead, the satellite one equally useless and lying forgotten upstairs, I’ve no way of knowing the time. How long had we been sleeping before we awoke? It can’t have been long, it was still pitch-black outside. And now we’ve been down here for about an hour. Without being able to see whether the sun’s risen, I can only go with my best estimation. Maybe it’s five a.m. I grimace, knowing I’ll probably be waking someone.

  Reaching into the depths of my memory, I try to remember how this thing works. I pull the microphone toward me and begin twisting dials.

  Thank fuck I dabbled with amateur radio in my younger days, and still remember my call sign. After tortuously having to go through the formal codes, I manage to make someone understand that I need help from my brothers. A quite simple message, bike down, no cell signal. And then the address which Raven had helpfully jotted down on a piece of paper.

  That done, I replace the mic then push myself back from the desk with a sense of satisfaction. Part one of our escape mission completed.

  Raven goes from grinning to biting her nails in just a few seconds. “How long until help gets here?”

  Putting my hands behind my head and interlocking my fingers, I grin. “Give Toad an hour or so to stop complaining about being woken at this bumfuck of an hour, then another half hour to get the brothers together. I’d say a good two to three hours before the cavalry arrives.”

  She grimaces and nibbles another nail.

  Reaching for her hand, I squeeze it. “Hey, at least someone’s coming. We know we’ll be able to get out of here.”

  Her face twists again, and she glances up to the low ceiling. “I don’t like staying down here, but I don’t want to go up there.”

  I notice her breathing is shallow and realise she’s struggling to keep herself from panicking. Stretching out my legs, I wince at the pull on my ankle. I regard her carefully and try to engage her in conversation. “That was some bullshit last night, wasn’t it?” Now I’ve got a message out, I relax a bit and instead of focusing on the practicalities, analyse what happened instead.

  I’d been unnerved enough, but Raven had been downright terrified, and I don’t jump to the immediate conclusion that it’s because I have a dick and she hasn’t. While I doubt anyone but a committed ghost hunter would have been much enamoured by what happened during the night, it strikes me Raven’s reaction was extreme. She’d run headlong into the woods without any shoes.

  Taking her hands and pulling her in between my outstretched legs, I stare at her and remember what the horror had pushed out of my mind. Back down at the road, she’d said her daddy was after her. If that was who I heard, he wasn’t being loving or friendly. While I’m no expert, from the little I know from horror films I’ve seen or books I’ve read, ghosts don’t hang around haunting the living without reason.

  “Raven,” I say, still staring at her. “You said it was your father and that your father died.” She also said she’d used to live here. I take a chance. “Does tickety tock mean something to you? Are you Mouse?”

  Already I’m thinking there are reasons for some pent-up energy to remain here. Possibly enough for her to harbour terrible memories in her head. No wonder staying here would give her nightmares. But while that could explain why she’s hearing these things, the question remains, why am I hearing them too?

  From the expression on her face, I’ve hit a bullseye. She jerks as if she’s a puppet and someone’s just lifted her strings.

  “Why are you here, sweetheart? What made you come?” The state of the cabin shows no one’s lived here for years.

  She straightens, tosses that glorious, though in need of a brush, hair back over her shoulders, and offers in a theatrically light tone, “Do you want me to see if I can rustle up some coffee?”

  Hmm. She’s evading my question. But coffee does sound good, particularly if it’s going to loosen her tongue. I’m slightly wary of any that her grandaddy stored away all those years ago, but perhaps if we can find an unopened jar, it might not be completely unpalatable.

  As I nod and watch her move to the door, I realise if she doesn’t want to talk to me, there’s nothing I can do. It’s her business after all. Shouldn’t be any skin off my nose, though I do have a bad case of curiosity, and her telling her story would be a good way of passing the time.

  But she owes me no explanation. I already know and understand why she caused me to crash my bike. I attach no blame to her. If I’d been alone, it’s possible I’d have done similar myself.

  As her footsteps fade in the direction of the kitchen, I try to convince myself I don’t care. When my brothers arrive, they’ll load up my bike and then we’ll take her to the nearest town and drop her off. She can go back to wherever she came from, and I’ll get on with my life.

  And make a point of staying out of haunted houses in the future. My own joke falls flat as I realise I’m deadly serious. This possible brush with the spiritual world has been enough to last me a lifetime.

  As for this cabin? It can rot for all that I’m concerned.

  Still, as I get to my feet to follow in the direction she’d disappeared, I know I’ll always wonder what all this has been about if I can’t get her to open up and tell me what she knows.

  “Here, try this.”

  Taking the tin cup from her hand, I blow on it, then cautiously take a small sip. It’s drinkable, just, with hopefully enough caffeine to start me feeling human again.

  She too sips as though she also needs fortifying.

  “So?” One last prompt to pry. If she doesn’t want to tell me, I won’t continue to pressure her. She owes me nothing.

  But as if what passes for coffee has revitalised her, she props herself against a countertop, and words come out of her mouth.

  “I was born here,” she begins, her eyes going upward as if clarifying she doesn’t mean in the bunker. “Lived here until I was eleven. My daddy had married my mom and moved her in to live with Grandaddy when my gramma had died. There was talk that he needed looking after, but I think that was just so Daddy could live in a free house.” She grimaces. “I never knew my grandmother or my mother. There were complications after my birth, and she died. She had me here. I’m not sure what medical assistance they got, but it wasn’t enough.”

  “Fuckin’ sorry to hear that, darlin’.”

  Her lips press together. “It’s hard to know what you’ve missed when you never had it from the start. I was brought up here,” again she points above us, “with my brother, my daddy and my grandaddy.”

  The cabin was big, but austere. Had she noticed that as a child? For all the lack of facilities or female influence, it doesn’t necessarily mean it wasn’t idyllic. Not wanting to jump to assumptions, I ask, “You have a good childhood?”

  She shrugs and shakes her head at the same time. “I knew nothing different. Neither my brother nor I went to school. Daddy wanted to keep us close. We were homeschooled by his pa.”

  “Not your dad?”

  “He could barely read and write himself.” She scoffs. “My grandaddy used to say he failed with him as a child.” She smiles softly. “But really it was because he was allowed to run wild. Granddaddy knew the mistakes he’d made with his son and wanted to do right by me. He taught me all that he knew. He was good with letters and building stuff with his hands.”

  “What did your dad do?”

  “Drank? Lazed around?”

  I start to get the picture she’s drawing, and it doesn’t sound very enviable at all. “Seems a bit of a lonely life for a girl. Was your brother good to you?”

  She snorts. “If by good you mean putting snakes in my bed and pulling my hair, then yeah.” A flicker of pain comes over her face, and I get a feeling her brother wasn’t particularly nice at all.

  Not a good childhood then. I frown. “What happened when you were, what did you say, eleven? How come you moved away? Was that when your father died?”

 

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