Chapter Text
Fancy a good old ghost story?
Pity. This isn’t one of those.
I’m not a big fan of them, you see. Never have been.
Even when everyone around me went through their obligatory “ghost phase” - as every kid does - I never did, never managed to watch any of the movies my friends begged me to, hid behind the sofa with my hands over my ears when my mum and sisters watched old documentaries on the telly. I can’t even tell you why. The topic always made me queasy, awoke some deep-rooted primal fear in me. Somehow it all felt too real, too present. Not like something that had happened many, many years ago.
So, this isn’t a ghost story. I’m sorry.
You can still go and look for one somewhere else. Grab a history book instead, why don’t you? They’ll tell you all your favourites: The Mudlane Phantom, Long Hugh Hennratty, who’s famously been dug up by Tom Rottwell while the illustrious Marissa Fittes warded the Phantom off with an iron rail. Or the Chelsea Outbreak, which’s source was found and contained under a former department store through quick thinking and initiative by a famous team of Fittes agents.
That’s all old news for you, I know. But the ruins of that store are still there. Go take a look at it if you are ever in London. I’ve heard they even offer ghost tours after dark -for the right amount of money.
But, between you and me, though, it’s a scam. No one has Seen or Heard a ghost on the isles for almost fifty years now. Not since The Problem - as the ghost epidemic infesting Great Britain has once been called - dwindled as abruptly as it had started fifty years prior.
To this day, no one knows exactly what happened to make it stop. Except that it somehow, somewhat coincided with the Great Accident at the former Fittes house. An explosion so big that it ripped a hole in the fabric of space and time connecting our world with the next, some say – or some other bizarre explanation scholars and self-acclaimed ghost experts have come up with in the decades since.
Paul thinks it’s bullshit.
Paul thinks, DEPREC – that’s the Department for Physical Residue Control, formerly DERAC – knows exactly what happened all these many years ago.
He thinks a lot of these things. And is pretty vocal about it when he is in the right mood – or has had a few too many pints. Which was often, growing up. Not much to do in our shitty excuse for a town otherwise, you see, except for getting drunk on the weekends, snogging boys like Paul behind the town's only pub and dreaming about the day when we would finally be old enough to leave for the big old city.
We? That’s Norrie and me. Norrie White and Lucy Carlyle, best friends since forever, destined for something greater than wasting away in the middle of nowhere, Cheviot Hills.
Destined for what exactly we didn’t know. But we were eager to find it out.
And we would start with university.
That summer, the letter I’d been waiting for forever had actually, finally come. My ticket out of there, my ticket to a better place, being free of the shitty town and my shitty mum and the sisters who didn’t give half a penny about me, my acceptance and scholarship for the Fine Arts programme at the University of London.
To this day, I still cannot really believe that they actually accepted me. I'd applied on a whim – or, more correctly, because Norrie had insisted. She’d made me swear and sign in one of my old self-teaching art books that we would both apply to universities in London, and we wouldn’t stop trying until we both got accepted.
Well, somehow, miraculously we did.
What are the chances?
Maybe it was karma, maybe we have both done something brave and heroic in a previous life to deserve this. Whatever it was, it didn’t matter.
It was all we ever wanted. Both Norrie and I would be going to London, would study at the same university. We would turn our lives around, as we’d sworn to ourselves.
Little did we know just how much our lives would change.
There isn’t much to tell, about our first few weeks in London. We settled in OK, I guess, despite the differences to everything we had known so far. And the differences were huge.
Have you ever been to London? The city is massive. However far you walk, however many stops you go on the tube, somehow you are always still in the middle of the city, houses surrounding you in every direction, people rushing by. So many people. I think on my first day in the city I bumped into more of them than I’d seen my entire life.
And it is so loud all the time, no matter the hour of the day – or night – you can always hear the traffic, passing cars, honking cabs, buses and trains.
London is bustling with life in a way Cheviot Hills could never even dream to be.
I mean, of course it is. I know that London isn’t the centre of the world, but for us it surely felt that way. It had been the centre of The Problem, once upon a time, and somehow that was still perceptible. I am not even sure why exactly. Maybe it was all the history we’d grown up with surrounding every building, every street, half of the names somehow familiar from some old tale. Maybe it was all the tourists bustling around, following guides with brightly coloured flags taking them on ghost tours to see all the famous haunting sites, taking pictures in front of Aickmere’s and the ruins of Fittes House that had been turned into a memorial.
Maybe it was just the general feeling of the place.
As far as I know, I’ve never been Sensible, even though it runs in the family. Granted, it is difficult to know these things nowadays, with all the actual hauntings gone, so maybe those were these residues of Talent kicking in.
Who knows.
All I know is that the city just felt right, as though this was the place I was meant to be, where I was destined to be.
I am not explaining this very well, so let’s skip a bit ahead in time, shall we?
Our story doesn’t really start until a little bit later, anyway.
Norrie and I moved to London at the beginning of September and spent a good month, trying to acclimate to our new lives, to the university and classes, new people and jobs and all that.
Unsurprisingly, Norrie found it easier to make new friends than me. Within a week after the start of the semester she’d been out for drinks with half of her classmates and had been invited to at least three parties.
Me? Not so much. I wasn’t the most outgoing person; I preferred to keep to myself. It might surprise you, but I am actually not that good with new people, especially people my age. They tend to think I am hostile, a bitch even.
But that suited me just fine. I had a lot on my plate anyway, these first few weeks, with assignments and classes, my new job in a tea shop just off campus and avoiding that one weird dude in my The Arts and The Problem lecture that refused to leave me alone – Harold Mailer or something, I don’t know, he kind of gave me the creeps. So, I preferred it that way, to fully embrace my lone wolf tendencies, focus on my studies, instead of engaging in hours of small talk with completely uninteresting people.
By Halloween though, Norrie had had enough. She’d been invited by a friend of a friend, a senior in her fashion design course, to a party in their fancy central London townhouse and she was adamant to bring me along.
No matter how much I whined and complained that I’d rather stay at home and, you know, avoid all the ghostly shit, she wouldn’t have it. We were going to that house party and that was it.
As you can probably guess, Halloween is kind of a big deal in London. In all of the country, really. But London, as the former heart of The Problem, is the centre of it.
During the days of The Problem, people obviously hadn’t celebrated the occasion. What’s there to celebrate, when basically every night is Halloween? How can you even pretend to be a ghost or dress up as some other supernatural being, when there are literal Visitors outside thirsting for your life? Kind of tasteless in the face of all the children out there every night, laying their life down for the safety of others.
Once the ghost epidemic had vanished, though, everyone, especially adults, had been eager to reclaim the night. And Halloween had become the symbol of that, the holiday celebrating humanity's victory over the otherworldly.
Stores are filled with decorations and costumes for months in advance. You can buy everything, from candyfloss cobwebs to cheap-looking plastic sources, sugary salt-bomb treats, and magnesium flares made from chocolate. And costumes, of course. Aluminium rapiers, so pointy, a kid in my primary school had almost taken my eye out with one once, colourful jackets to dress up as an agent from your favourite agency, Visitor costumes ranging from bedsheets to alleged historical accurate replications of real apparitions. Everything you can imagine and more.
The festivities last almost the entire week, from October the 27th, up until November the 1st. There is a whole procedure to it, agreed upon in the years following The Problem. It starts with children's carnivals and parties; big, colourful parades in the streets of every major city of the country and then, on November 1st, solemn commemoration of those that lost their lives in the fight against the supernatural.
Every year the Prime Minister holds a speech, which is broadcasted all over the country, after laying down a wreath at the memorial in Whitehall, between the rows and rows of iron tombs of fallen agents. People pilger to the cemeteries and family graves to light candles and thank whatever deity they believed in that their loved ones can once more forever rest in peace.
I’ve always kind of avoided all of it. Dressing up as visitors had always felt wrong to me, the commemorative services gave me an unpleasant feeling and there was nothing in the cemeteries waiting for me except the grave of one absent, alcoholic father that I was glad to avoid. So, I always holed myself up in my room, ignored the yells from my mum and sisters that I was an ungrateful brat, and sketched my time away.
This year, though, everything would be different. Norrie insisted on it. And who was I to fight back against the force of nature my best friend could be when she’d set her mind on something?
So, I donned my muddiest combat boots, dark skirt and that one shirt that had unexplained holes in it, Norrie insisted kind of looked like ectoplasm stains, my favourite dark-blue jacket, and thermo-ties to ward off the cold. I put on the utility belt I’d once bought for painting, with pouches and loops to hold my paint brushes, that I now filled with rolls of Aluminium foil to imitate canisters of Greek Fire and a children’s wooden toy rapier.
I looked at myself in the mirror critically. It didn’t look like much, a cheap imitation of what an agent might once have looked like, no fancy uniform indicating my affiliation to any famous agency. I shrugged. Good enough for a party I didn’t really want to go to anyway.
Taking the tube, filled with all kinds of people in costumes on their way to some party or another, Norrie – dressed as a nonspecific Cold Maiden - and I arrived at the given address at 8:30 on the dot.
It was a quaint neighbourhood, neatly trimmed hedges, impeccable facades, colourful painted wooden doors, and all. Just like you would imagine a typical, upper-class British street. The house in question, 35 Portland Row, looked exactly like every other one in the street: perfectly, lovingly maintained, with flower boxes in front of the windows and a small lavender bush up front. A metal plaque next to the door read: D.J. and C.A. Lockwood, Physical Historians and Artefact Experts. For Antiques Evaluation call: xxxx xxxx xxx.
“You sure that is the right address?” I mumbled. This didn’t seem like a house someone would throw a grand Halloween party in. The lack of decoration made this even more obvious. I half expected some neighbour to stick their head out of the window and chase us off for trespassing. Shifting on my feet uncomfortably, I felt wholly out of place in my cheap costume and dirty boots.
“Yeah, that’s the one Jessica has given me.” Norrie said. Shrugging, she rang the bell.
“Are you crazy”, I hissed, but before I could smack her hand away, the door was answered by the most beautiful woman I’d seen in my entire life. She was maybe a few years older than us with long, dark hair and chocolate brown eyes that seemed to look right to the bottom of your soul. I felt rooted on the spot, when a brilliant smile appeared on her face, showing rows of perfectly white teeth.
“Jessica, hi.” Norrie greeted the woman enthusiastically, surging forward for a hug, Jessica returned warmly. I stayed back, waving my hand awkwardly. “Hi, I am Lucy.”
“Hello Norrie and Lucy, come in, come in”, she said in a warm mezzo-soprano, opening the door wider and stepping aside to let us through.
The inside of the house was nothing like the exterior suggested. It was well-maintained as well, but the choice of decoration was… something. Antique masks, dream catchers and historical artefacts adorned every free space on the walls. A glass cabinet beside the front door displayed a set of vintage rapiers and other peculiar objects that seemed like they’d once been active sources, still in their silver glass containers. A set of bone fragments was displayed next to a stand with very lovely jewellery, a piece of bloody fabric right next to fashionable drinking cups.
My eyes went wide, as I looked around, taking it all in. Everything was strange and kind of mismatched, from the antiques to the photographs in golden frames, from the colourful wallpaper to the ornate tiles. It should have made me feel off, it should have probably creeped me out, given my dislike for the paranormal.
Strangely, it did none of that. The house felt, for a lack of better word, homey - in a way the cottage up North I’d grown up in had never done. For a fraction of a second, I had a feeling like I’d been here before.
I dismissed it quickly. That was an absurd thought. How would a girl like me have ever found her way into a house like that?
“My parents’ collection is very peculiar, I know.” I heard Jessica chuckle next to me. “But the good thing is, you don’t need any Halloween decoration with a décor like this.”
I tried to laugh at her joke, but it came out all wrong. I blushed slightly, feeling awkward. Her smile turned softer. “I am happy you are here, Lucy. Norrie has talked a lot about you. Please, make yourself at home, the living room is through here, the kitchen is downstairs. There are drinks and snacks if you’d like.”
She placed her hand gently on my shoulder. I felt the warmth through all of my layers.
When she left, probably to tend to her other guests, I looked around once more.
Somehow, Norrie had vanished in the half second, I’d taken my eyes off her, which left me with little to do but wander around alone, exploring this strangely familiar house.
Jessica hadn’t been lying, a half-floor below I found the kitchen with a bowl of suspiciously looking punch that strongly smelled of alcohol. I suspected that it had been spiked by more than one of the guests but got myself a glass anyway. I had a decent alcohol tolerance from years of experience, after all.
The living room on the ground floor and the backyard, I discovered, were where most of the party was concentrated. They were packed. People were milling around, talking, and laughing, dancing to the generic pop-music coming from the speakers, dressed up as visitors and agents. Every costume imaginable was represented, recreating all your favourite historical stories: The Mudlane Phantom? The Clapham Butcher Boy? The Screaming Spirit of Cumberland Place? They were all there, detailed costumes dedicated to the Visitors once trapped in Fittes House’s famous relict columns. But also, more recent hauntings: The Aickmere’s Poltergeist, the Mudchute Wraith, the Ealing Cannibal, and so on.
It was quite tasteless, in my opinion, but who would ever ask me about any of these things.
As I wandered around, I drank punch, ate Halloween-themes snacks and chatted with a few people, trying to pass my time. Most of them were fashion design students, which kind of explained the amount of detail and work that had been put into the costumes. But it also meant that I didn’t necessarily have a lot of common conversation ground with them.
Norrie was still unlocatable.
Eventually, I somehow found myself in a library. It was a beautiful room, dark wooden shelves stretching up to the high ceiling, filled with every kind of book imaginable. The homey feeling was particularly strong here. I could almost imagine myself sitting there, in one of the comfortable looking armchairs, a fire crackling in the little fireplace, snuggled under a fluffy blanket with someone beside me…
Someone… someone with a brilliant smile and gentle chocolate-coloured eyes… dark curls I wanted to run my hands through… I wanted… I wanted…
“Enjoying the selection?” A voice snatched me out of my daydream. I flinched, and just like a dream right after waking, the image in front of me disappeared, bursting like a soap bottle.
What had I just been thinking about?
Dumbly I stared at the rows of books in front of me, my hand outstretched, my fingers running over the worn-out spines of some paperback pulp novels.
I blinked, shaking my head, and turned to the owner of the voice, standing in the doorway.
Have you ever experienced a Déjà-vu? A profound feeling that what is happening right in front of you has happened before?
Maybe Déjà-vu is the wrong word for what I experienced then in this weird, familiar library. Because it wasn’t as though I thought that this scene in front of me had happened before, I knew it had. For one single moment and one moment alone, I knew that I had seen this man in front of me before, known this man, shared a deep-rooted friendship with him, built on trust and mutual understanding, based on life-threatening situations and quiet moments shared over tea at a kitchen table.
“What’s wrong with you? What are you staring at?”
I blinked; the moment was gone.
Or maybe not. No way I had known this idiot before.
“What do you mean what’s wrong with me? What’s wrong with you?” Epic comeback, I know.
The boy – man – in front of me raised an eyebrow under his mop of unruly dark curls and regarded me unfazed through his spectacles.
He had haphazardly thrown on a cheap lilac jacket, some underwhelming replica of a former Grimble uniform he hadn’t even bothered to button over his flannel shirt and comic-T combo. His costume was even more half assed than mine.
“I was just enjoying the peace and quiet. Before you turned up.” I crossed my arms in front of my chest and sank down into one of the armchairs, looking at him with a sullen expression.
“Can you do this somewhere else? Not in my chair.”
“Your chair? I didn’t know that this was your house.” I raised my head like a disobedient toddler.
His expression still hadn’t changed “It isn’t. It’s my mate’s house. And yet, you are sitting in my chair.”
I rolled my eyes, downed the glass of punch in my hands – my fourth? Maybe. I wasn’t so sure at this point of the night anymore – and stood. “I don’t want your stupid chair anyway.”
Angrily, I marched out of the room, trying to shoulder-check the tosser on my way out.
Trying being the keyword here, because right as I passed through the doorway I collided head first with the chest of a guy that had just come up the stairs.
His arms automatically came around my waist to steady me, in the process of which the drink he’d been holding sloshed over the rim of his glass and down my back, leaving a wet, cold, sticky trail in its wake.
I almost didn’t register it, too caught up in the feeling of warmth suddenly engulfing me. I was lightheaded, my vision spinning. The only thing I was able to focus on was a pair of deep dark eyes, staring down at me intently. My stomach felt weird, suddenly doing somersaults.
Surely a result of the punch. What else could it have been?
I was clutching the guy’s shirt almost desperately, I realised belatedly, blushing a deep shade of red.
“Are you alright?” His deep voice vibrated through my body, making me feel like I’d just drunk the warmest cup of the most delicious tea.
Lamely I managed to nod. “Yes.” I whispered, barely audible, voice caught somewhere in my throat.
I tried to take a step away, disentangle myself from the guy, somehow get a grip of my bloody thoughts.
And promptly faceplanted right in front of him.