Silencing the Dead by Will Harker (ready to read books .TXT) 📗

She appeared to be very thin, big dark eyes bright in their hollows. Although the photo looked to be from the eighties or early nineties, the little girl had a striking Edwardian quality to her, an impression reinforced by the slightly oversized black lace gloves she wore.

“Genevieve Bell was notoriously reclusive,” the interviewer said. “This photo from her childhood was one of the few we could source. You are aware, Dr Gillespie, that Miss Bell died quite recently? Not long after your podcast with her, in fact. Do you harbour any regrets for how you treated her?”

Gillespie tutted as if the question was beneath him. “Of course I’m sorry she died so tragically, but let’s not sentimentalise the woman’s legacy. In life, she victimised others. Preyed upon their grief and credulity, although as I have said, perhaps unwittingly.”

“Very well, then shall we return to your upcoming documentary?”

“Willingly,” Gillespie said with relish. “In advance of transmission, I shall be going down to Purley Rectory tomorrow to protest this Ghost Seekers nonsense. I would encourage any rational citizen to join me there and help combat Everwood’s pantomime. This kind of thing should be stopped. Must be stopped.”

He turned that stern and uncompromising gaze upon the camera.

“I hope you and the viewers take me seriously when I say this: there is nothing I will not do to rid humanity of the stain of superstition. Nothing.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

I woke screaming, sheets twisted around my body, every muscle tensed. Somewhere out in the dark, an unsecured piece of tarpaulin cracked in the wind, and in the riptide of my dream, I imagined it as the snap of burning wood. It took a few breathless seconds for the images to lose their power and for my heart to settle.

In the nightmare, I had stood before the same witch’s pyre I’d pictured while walking with Haz. Around me, the baying of an unseen mob, eager for the flames to do their holy work. Their fury was directed at a writhing figure staked at the heart of the bonfire. No agony she endured seemed to satisfy their hatred. Close by, warming his gloved hands above the flames, stood a man in a long black cloak and a tall Puritan hat. All at once, the mob fell silent, stunned perhaps that the still-burning woman appeared to have freed herself from the stake.

She came at me fast, lurching out of the inferno on the charcoal sticks of her legs, the wind tearing at her flesh and dispersing it like black snow across the clearing. It was then that I saw the great jumbled mass of Purley Rectory grow up behind her, red fire reflected in its windows. I tried to step back, to turn and run, but the dream held me in place. Inside the raging cowl that flickered about her head, I saw the witch’s skin, white and melting, like a wax doll thrown into a furnace. It was Aunt Tilda’s face. It was Harry’s. The two bubbling and mixing together as they slipped away from the skull.

“Thou shalt not suffer, Scotty!” they shrieked at me in their weird hybrid voice. “Thou shalt not!”

I tried to look away but again the dream wouldn’t let me. I was forced to watch them fall, to explode into dust at my feet, and for that dust to reform into the shattered body of Lenny Kerrigan. Flowers immediately began to grow around him, marigolds the colour of consuming fire.

“You wanted a puzzle, my boy. The world has given you one. Take it.”

I looked up into the face of the man in the Puritan hat.

The face of the dormant monster, Peter Garris. He laughed that oh-so-rare laugh of his, dry as the corpse-dust at my feet.

Now, the nightmare over, I tugged the damp sheets from my body and went to the sink. I poured a bowl of cold water and washed myself down with a flannel, scrubbing the dark bristle of my jaw, my chest, the hair under my arms, feverishly cleansing myself of the dream. Afterwards, I just stood there, wet and shivering, looking out through the little window above the sink.

I had fallen asleep breathing in the scent of Harry’s pillow, my phone in my hand. The last text I’d received had been from Sal following the interview with Dr Gillespie, Could cause us trouble? I’d replied, saying that the doctor’s planned demonstration against the Ghost Seekers event probably wouldn’t amount to much. Anyway, despite his arrogance, I had found myself agreeing with virtually everything the man had said. Everwood was a fraud and our association with him cheapened the reputation of Jericho Fairs.

Beyond the window, a grey dawn was silvering the mist that blanketed the wood. In the distance, I could make out faint wisps stealing in and then retreating from the door of Purley Rectory. I don’t know why, but I half-expected to see Haz there, draped in the shadow of that old house. I stayed at the window, watching and shivering until the cold forced me back to bed.

After another hour of staring at my phone, I dug out the remote control and switched on the TV. More time passed, mindlessly flicking between breakfast shows until the face from the billboard snapped me out of my daydreaming.

Darrel Everwood was sprawled in a flamboyantly relaxed attitude across the studio sofa while, perched opposite, the breakfast hosts grinned as if this was the most outrageous thing they had ever seen. That trademark cocky smile was firmly in place, although perhaps a little strained, like a high-tension wire about to snap. Still, Everwood played to the camera brilliantly, mascara-rimmed eyes twinkling with mischief.

“So, Darrel, you’re here to tell us about the Ghost Seekers Halloween Special,” the female host began.

Everwood sat up, suddenly alert. “Miles, Rosanna, this is gonna be the biggest séance we’ve done yet,” he said, in a Cockney accent about as convincing as Dick Van Dyke’s in Mary Poppins. “I kid you not, this Purley Rectory