Dark Solstice, page 13
“Right, that’s it,” Jamesy says. “I’m not going in there now. Fuck that. Fucking ghosts and a man with half a head. Why’d you have to tell me all that for?”
“Because you asked, that’s why.”
“I only asked if you worked in the fucking place!”
“Same thing,” I say, smiling a little at his uneasiness now, if only because it makes my uneasiness a little easier to bear. Truth is, I’m shiteing myself about going back into that house just because of the ghosts alone, never mind that the house belongs to a fucking witch now. “Anyway, you've got your fucking nunchucks to protect you, haven’t you?” I shake my head at the sight of the wooden nunchaku sitting on his lap. “I still can’t believe you brought them things. You even know how to use them?”
“Course I do,” he says, holding them up. “I did two years of kung fu training back in the early nineties. I’m like fucking Bruce Lee with these things.”
“I’m sure you are, like. You couldn’t’ve just brought a fucking baseball bat or something?
“I don’t have one anymore. Sure, them wee spides took it off me that night I went out to them for drinking outside my flat.”
“Aye, that’s right. They beat the cunt outta you with it, didn’t they?”
“Fuck up, there was loads of them, so there was. You’re one to talk anyway, after what happened you yesterday.”
“Aye, whatever.” I toss the butt of my feg out the window just as my phone vibrates on the dash. “Hold on. Here we go.”
I lift the phone off the dash and look at the text that came through from Aoife, which says:
GO NOW!! BE QUICK…AND WATCH OUT FOR SECURITY!!!
The message is followed by a smiley face emoji.
“Security?” I say staring at the text. “What fucking security?”
“Nobody said anything about security,” Jamesy says. “What’s she on about?”
“I dunno. Alarm, maybe. Though there was no alarm when Malachy sold the house. Unless Meabh has installed one.”
“Or unless Aoife means a different type of security?”
“Like what?”
“I dunno, fucking guard dogs or something.”
Or something worse, I think, though I don’t say it to Jamesy. He’s bricking himself enough as it is.
“Whatever it is,” I tell him as I start the car up, “I’m sure we can handle it, right?”
Jamesy nods, not very confidently. “Aye, right.”
I drive the car up the road to Meabh’s house and pull into the gravel drive, parking in front of the house.
“Jesus,” Jamesy says. “Look at this fucking place. It’s like the Amityville Horror, so it is.”
“Wise up, Jamesy,” I say. “It’s not that bad. It’s just a fucking house.”
Although to be fair to Jamesy, the house does look creepy as fuck. It’s a massive red brick thing covered in ivy. The grey tiles on the roof look stained with blood, at least in my imagination, and the windows are all grimy as if they hadn’t been washed in ages. Just looking at the place is making my sphincter go tight. What I didn’t tell Jamesy earlier was that I also saw things while working on the house that time. I saw a woman in a bloodstained nightie walk around a corner one day, and I also saw all the bloody symbols on the bedroom wall before I had to paint it. If it wasn’t for the fact that Malachy was paying me well to work on the house—and the fact that I had debts to pay off as well—I wouldn’t’ve stuck around. Coming back to the place now felt like revisiting the scene of your worst nightmare.
“A hundred grand, Jamesy,” I say, as much to psych myself up as him. “Just remember why we’re here. Think of all the hookers we’re going to have in Amsterdam. You've always wanted to fuck a black woman, haven’t you? You’ve always wanted a big black ass bouncing on your cock? Well, this is how you’re going to make that happen.”
“Right,” Jamesy says nodding. “Fucking right.”
“’Mon then,” I say as I open the car door. “Let’s get this over with.”
Once outside, I go to the boot and get my bag of tools and my hurley stick.
“Right,” Jamesy says. “You’re the burglary expert. Where we breaking in from?”
“We’ll go in though the back door,” I say as I scan the front of the house for a burglar alarm, surprised when I don’t see any. I go around the side of the house and see no sign of any alarms either. Same for around the back.
Happy days. No wires to cut.
Around the back of the house is a large garden dotted with trees and well-tended flower beds that seem to contain only herbs and weird looking plants.
There’s also something else, something that causes me and Jamesy to stand and stare for a minute.
“What the fuck is that?” Jamesy asks me as we take in the large stone slab mounted on two smaller upended slabs. It looks a bit like a dolmon, if you’ve ever seen one of them. You know, the stone monuments the ancient peoples of Ireland built around the country? You can still see them dotted around fields about the place if you care to look. No one knows what the dolmons were built for, but looking at the stone slab in Meabh’s garden, I have a good idea what this one is for.
“I think that’s an altar,” I say.
“An altar?”
“Aye. A sacrificial alter.”
“Jesus,” Jamesy says. “Right enough?”
“I think so. I think that might be where Bronna is supposed to end up the night.”
“On top of that thing?”
I nod. “Yep. Like a sacrificial lamb.”
“Christ, that’s fucked up.”
“It’s fucked up alright. C’mon, let’s get inside so we can leave this fucking place.”
“Good idea.”
At the back door, I drop my tool bag and open it up. The bag is full of useful stuff I collected over the years, stuff like crowbars of different sizes, various prying devices, wire cutters, hammers, screwdrivers, a centre hole punch and a few other odds and ends. The back door of the house is just a standard wooden door, so I take out a large-sized crowbar from the bag.
I’m about to get to work on the door when Jamesy says, “Hold on a minute.” He steps forward and tries the door handle, pushing it down, and we’re both surprised when we find the door is unlocked and Jamesy is able to push it open. “Happy days. She’s already open. You can put your tools away, big lad.”
As happy as I am that I don’t have to waste time prying the door open, I was sort of looking forward to showing Jamesy my breaking in skills, even if I am probably a bit rusty at this stage. I also find it a bit worrying that Meabh didn’t bother to lock her door, which meant she had forgotten to, or else she wasn’t too worried about eejits like us breaking in, which was worrying in itself, like.
“Alright,” I say after putting the crowbar back in the bag and leaving the bag where it is on the paving stones. “Go on in then.”
“Aye, right,” Jamesy says. “After you, big lad.”
“Frigsake, Jamesy. You leave your balls at home or something?”
“After what you just told me? You’re leading the way.”
“Aye, course I frigging am. C’mon then, yella belly. Watch you don’t pish yourself again.”
As I lead the way into the old house, I swear I hear a voice whispering somewhere inside.
A voice that whispers, “Wel-come…Fer-gallll…”
And a shiver goes down my spine.
14
Standing the gloomy kitchen of the big house as we look around at all the weird stuff in it, it feels like my guts are turning to mush, and I have to squeeze my sphincter tight in case I shite myself. In my mind or for real, I can still hear faint whispers; too faint to make out any words, but the sound itself is enough to put me on edge big time. “You hear that?” I whisper to Jamesy.
“Hear what?” he whispers back, too busy staring at all the stuff on the worktops to pay me any real attention. I can’t blame him for being freaked out, because the whole kitchen is full of weird dried-out plants hanging from various places, and there're jars of strange-coloured concoctions all over the worktops.
“Nothing,” I say as the whispering seems to stop, thankfully. “Fuck, I feel like I’m going mad in here already.”
“I know what you mean,” Jamesy says. “What the fuck is all this shite in here?” He picks up a jar and opens it, and then recoils at the foul smell inside so much that he drops the jar and it smashes all over the floor.
“Ferfrigsake, Jamesy! Fucking careful, will ye!”
Jamesy’s coughing, his eyes watering. “Fuck, that stench! Jesuschrist!”
I can smell it now too, an eye-watering, acrid stench like sulphur mixed with rotten meat. “Jesusfuck…let’s get outta here.”
Still coughing, Jamesy exits the kitchen before me, stepping out into a long hallway with doors on either side, and old oil paintings hanging on the wall. “Christ,” he says looking down the hallway. “How many rooms are in this place, anyway?”
“A lot,” I say, taking in how different the house seems inside since the last time I was here. It was always a gloomy house, even in bright sunlight, but it seems even more dark and foreboding now, especially with the creepy oil paintings on the wall. Back when I worked in the place, it always felt like there was something else in the house along with us, a presence I or any of the other workers could not explain. A presence besides the ghosts of the dead family, that is. Standing now in the hallway, I feel that presence again, only more magnified this time, as if the witch moving into the place had somehow awakened a great evil within the bowels of the house.
“Look at these fucking paintings,” Jamesy says, stopping to stare at one. A massive oil painting that shows a woman being burned at the stake, onlookers watching with smiles on their faces. But the creepy thing is, the woman being burned isn’t screaming in agony as the flames lick at her naked body. No, this woman is smiling as she looks down upon her accusers, as if she knows she’ll have her revenge at some point. “You reckon that’s a witch?”
I nod as I stare at the painting. “Aye, I do. Look at her, evil bitch.”
“She doesn’t seem too worried about burning to death.”
“Yeah, I wonder why?” I say sarcastically. “C’mon. We don’t have much time here.”
We head on down the hallway toward the entrance hallway to find a winding staircase leading up to the next floor. I get one foot on the staircase before I stop dead. “You hear that?” I whisper, looking around at Jamesy.
“No, what—”
Footsteps thumping lightly across the floor upstairs makes him stop talking.
Footsteps followed by a child’s laughter.
“Aw fuck,” Jamesy whispers, his face full of panic now. “What is that?”
“I don’t wanna say it, but it sounded like a child’s laughter.”
“Fuck, fuck. There’s somebody up there?”
“I dunno. No. There can’t be.”
We both stay still and listen, hoping it’s just fear and our overactive imaginations causing us to hear things. And for a minute, I think this is the case.
Until the footsteps start up again, echoing on the landing above us, and the same sound of two children laughing carries down to us.
“Aw fuck, Fergie,” Jamesy says, backing away from me now. “That’s them fucking kids who were murdered by their da. No fucking way am I going up there. Fuck that.”
I stare down at him, wanting to tell him it’s not what he thinks it is, that the sounds are just that—sounds in an old house.
But of course, they aren’t. The sounds are unmistakable.
“They’re just ghosts, Jamesy,” I tell him, trying to appeal to his, admittedly limited, rationale mind. “They can’t hurt us.”
“I don’t give a fuck, Fergie,” he says. “Seeing them is enough. And they can fucking hurt us if Malachy is anything to go by. Fuck it, let’s just go, Fergie. We can do the spell without the pubes. ’Mon, please…”
“Frigsake, Jamesy!” I snap at him. “Get a fucking hold of yourself, will ye? We saw worse in the hospital, didn’t we?”
“I don’t care. I’m not fucking going up there. No fucking way.”
“Jesus, Jamesy, we fucking have to! We’ve no choice!”
“Says you. Malachy can take his fucking money back. I don’t care.”
“And what about Meabh? Are we just going to let her kill Bronna?”
“You said you hated Bronna, sure!”
“Aye, but that doesn’t mean I want her dead, ferfucksake!”
“Christ…” he says shaking his head. “I fucking hate ghosts.”
“Look, you’ve got your nunchucks, haven’t you? And I’ve got my hurley stick.”
“Sure, what good are fucking nunchucks against a ghost, like?”
“You don’t know until you try. If Malachy can hurt you, then maybe we can hurt the ghosts in this place.”
“Aye, maybe being the operative word, like.”
“Fuck it,” I say, having had enough of his fearmongering bullshit. “I’m going up there with or without you, Jamesy. You can fucking wait here if you want.”
I get up two more stairs before he stops me. “What, you’re just going to leave me down here on my own?”
“Well, you won’t fucking come with me, so what do you want me to do, like?”
“Hang on,” he says, now listening hard. “I can’t hear anything now. Maybe they’ve gone.”
“Yeah,” I say. “They know they can’t scare us so they’ve fucked off again. ’Mon, will ye?”
Jamesy lets out a big deep sigh and shakes his head as he finally musters the balls to step back onto the staircase again, nunchucks in hand. “I’m telling you,” he says. “If I see one of them wee bastards up here, I’ll crack their fucking skulls with m’chucks. I don’t care if their only fucking children.”
“Or dead,” I say, smiling.
“Or fucking dead.”
We head up the stairs, taking it slowly as we both listen for sounds, Jamesy jumping at every creak he hears, making me jumpy too, the bastard. When we finally get to the top of the stairs, we pause on the landing and look down the long, dark hallway on either side. Looking to my right, I say, “If memory serves, the master bedroom is down there. We might have more luck searching the bed than the bathroom.”
“Aye, that’s if Meabh even sleeps up here,” Jamesy says. “For all we know, the bitch could sleep in the basement in a fucking coffin or something.”
“Catch yourself on, Jamesy. She’s not a fucking vampire, ferchrissake.”
“You think they exist?”
“Vampires?”
“Aye. Every fucking thing else seems to.”
“How the fuck should I know? ’Mon so we can find the bedroom and get these fucking pubes so we can get outta here.”
“You even have anything to put them in?”
“Put what in?”
“The fucking pubes.”
“No, actually. Have you?”
“My feg packet, maybe?”
“Aye, good thinking Batman. That’ll do.”
“There’s a couple left in it, though.”
“In what?”
“My feg packet.”
“Well fucking take them out then! Put them in your fucking pocket or something.”
“But then they might break in my pocket, and I’ve only two left.”
“Ferfucksake, Jamesy! If they break, I’ll give you two of mine. How’s that?”
“Aye, alright then.”
“Jesus. Come on, you fucking tit ye.”
The atmosphere in the house is oppressive, as if the walls are closing in, and despite the cold temperature outside, it’s starting to feel hot. Sweat runs down my forehead and sticks the shirt to my back, and I realise I’m trembling slightly as I lead the way down the too dark hallway in search of the master bedroom.
And then halfway down I’m forced to stop as something appears out of the gloom up ahead. A small figure in what looks like bloodstained pyjamas.
Awjesusfuck it’s her…it’s the wee girl.
“Fergie!” Jamesy squeaks behind me.
“I see,” I whisper.
The wee girl is just standing there staring at us. She’s maybe seven or eight years of age with long blonde hair that’s stained with blood. She also has a gaping hole in her chest that you can see right into. The wound looks fresh, as if she was only shot a minute ago. “Will you play with me?” she asks.
“Aw Christ…” Jamesy says in a shaky voice, as if to say, Not again, like. “Fergie…”
“You’ve pished yourself again, haven’t you?”
“Aye, I have.”
“Frigsake, Fergie.”
The wee girl takes a step closer. “Have you seen my daddy?” she asks.
I shake my head, not wanting to answer her, but I do anyway. “No. I haven’t. Sorry.”
She takes another step forward, and I see she’s holding a small teddy bear in her hand. “Play with me,” she demands like some spoilt little bitch.
“Just go away,” I say to her. “Leave us alone. Go back to your room or something. Go, fuck off!”
“Play with me!”
“No!”
“Play. With. Me!”
“Fergie!”
“What?”
“Behind us!”
I turn around and look down the hallway and across the landing to the far hallway where a wee boy stands, also dressed in bloodstained pyjamas. Even from this distance, I can see he looks more horrific than his sister. One of his arms is missing as if it had been blown off, and there’s a sizeable chunk out of his neck and one side of his face.
“Play with us!” the wee shite’s demanding now.
And then they both start, the two of them together, chanting “Play with us!” over and over as they advance towards us.
“Ah fuck, Fergie, they’re getting closer!” Jamesy wails.
Realising we have to do something, I raise my hurley stick and say to Jamesy, “You take the wee boy. I’ll take the wee girl.”
“What?“
“Fucking hit the wee cunt with your nunchucks!”
“But he’s just a kid!”
“I don’t fucking care! Just fucking hit him!”
