Chapter Text
Before Alison Cooper moved into Button House she learned that the grounds were haunted. Three years later, she has found this to be an understatement.
It was the night before the move and insomnia had set in. Mike was dead to the world, mouth hanging ajar. The computer casted a sickly glow across the room, making Alison’s throbbing headache worsen. She was scrolling through articles about the area (including thrilling news such as ‘Local man outraged at being asked to give donations at Tesco’) and stumbled across the headline ‘Faces in the water: haunting images emerge from West Horsley’. With equal amounts of scepticism and trepidation swirling in her stomach, she clicked on the article and began to read:
On Saturday 24th March, dog-walker Mary Scott was given the fright of her life when she saw something truly haunting on the estate of Button house.
“I often go for walks along that way,” says Ms Scott. “It’s a nice place, quiet and secluded. I don’t normally go there so late as it’s not well-lit, but I'd lost track of time and that path was familiar to me. Must have been around 7 o’clock? I was playing fetch with Mabel, y’know, just throwing a stick around when I accidentally lobbed it a bit too far and it landed in the lake. Normally, she’d be all over that and jump in, soaking me in the process, but that evening she was whimpering like nothing I'd heard before and pacing the shoreline like a tiger in a cage. That's unsettling enough. Anyone who’s worked with animals knows to trust their instincts more than your own. I went to get her and that’s when I saw it. This...face in the water. It was a man, and he looked like he was in pain, so I called out to him and reached into the water to help but...he just disappeared. Just like that. I was so shaken. I took Mabel and hightailed it out of that place. Afterwards, I felt sick, like I was infected by some sort of bad aura coming from the man. It was just so real. I don’t even believe in that ghost stuff, but I can’t think of any other explanation.”
Spooky stuff! It seems inevitable that there should be spirits stuck around that area. Button House has been there for centuries, in fact, Henry VIII is said to have dined there. But it is very rare to hear about such Lord-of-the-Rings-esque sightings. We sent our top investigators out to the location, equipped with the latest technology including dowsing rods, the latest edition of the SpiritShack’s EVP recorder (check out our review here), an-
Alison snaps the laptop shut.
“Yep, I’m definitely losing it. There’s no such thing as ghosts.”
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After three years of living with ghosts, Alison can comfortably say that she has, indeed, lost her mind. Not because of the whole oh-I-can-see-dead-people-now thing, more because of the fact the aforementioned dead people are so fucking annoying.
This thought is at the forefront of her mind as she spends her morning as she normally does: being given unsolicited advice, commentary and judgement from the ghosts. All she wants to do is try a new recipe in the half an hour of free time that she has this week. She’d seen a woman on Instagram make shakshuka in her clean, modern, aesthetic kitchen and had (incorrectly) thought she could get it first go.
“I mean,” she said to Mike, “how can anyone mess up eggs in a tomato sauce?”
By having a cooker that is actively trying to kill itself, apparently. It should be impossible for a sauce-based meal to be so solid. The bottom has burnt, forming a sedimentary layer on the pan, which is probably never going to come off, and the top layer has an oily sheen to it that looks disturbingly slimy. Plus, the smell emanating from it is giving Mary a run for her money!
Poking at it with a wooden spoon she announces, “I’m not gonna risk it.”
“Risk it for a biscuit?” chirps Mike automatically, a long-running inside joke.
“Biscuits? Where? Oh, is this ‘Is it cake?’ but with biscuits? How exciting!” Kitty squeals. She runs off before anyone can answer her, presumably to find these imaginary biscuits.
Peering over Alison’s shoulder at the monstrosity bubbling (and somehow simultaneously burning?) in the saucepan, Thomas croons in her ear, “I would never drive you to such lengths as this. I would have a whole consortium of the top chefs from France, Italy and, indeed, across the world waiting on you.”
Grimacing at his words, proximity and questionable attempts at French and Italian accents, Alison rolls her eyes and starts to scrape the bottom of the pan.
“Ah,” Julian sighs. “I do miss Italian food. And Italian wine. And Italian women!”
“Ooh, I remember the first time I ever had pizza,” says Pat, a childlike joy in his eyes. “T’were at the Pizza Express in Woking. I got the classic margherita and Carol got the vegetariana and we shared a plate o’ doughballs in the candlelight. Peak of our marriage that was. Apart from Daley’s birth of course. And that one time that-”
“Hold on. The Pizza Express in Woking?” Alison asks, incredulously. Mike perks up from his phone with a half bemused, half worried expression on his face.
Pat swivels in confusion before answering, “Yes? A right quality establishment, mind.”
Alison chuckles and shares a look with Mike who sends a flat one back as if to say, “I don’t know why you’re looking at me. I don't know what your dead mate’s just said.”
“Yeah, you don’t say. I hear it’s fit for royalty!”
She laughs at her joke and doesn't mind when no one else joins in - the ghosts because they don’t understand the reference, and Mike because he can’t hear half the conversation. She's used to it by now. It's the small joys in life, she tells herself.
“What be the Pizza Express?” asks a bewildered Mary.
“I assume it’s a steam train of some kind, Mary,” Lady Button says. “Perhaps it travels via a train-line towards Pisa in Italy.”
“No, no,” Pat laughs. “Pizza Express is a chain restaurant that specialises in...hang on!”
He looks at each of the present ghosts in turn, a realisation dawning on him.
“None of you have had pizza before! Except Julian and I.”
The politician makes his affirmative parliament noise. “What about Mr Square over there. Didn't you have pizza while fighting the Italians?”
The Captain fusses at the insult for a moment before answering, “No, I never came across this so called ‘pizza’. I was a tad busy. There was a war on you know! Perhaps Havers would know about this, he served in Italy for a stint, I believe.”
Ever since Sam and Claire’s wedding, Alison has noticed the Captain has been much more forthcoming about his past, and especially about his beloved lieutenant. It brings a warmth to her heart. No matter how much he drives her up the wall, it has been an honour to watch him feel more comfortable with himself and to be a part of that change. She's been trying to soft launch modern-day queer media, putting on movies and TV shows, music and just casually talking about the LGBTQ+ community. In fact, she’s found that it’s not only helped the Captain (seeing his tender smile that time she left Maurice playing in the TV room was worth the virus that was downloaded onto her laptop from the dodgy website) but all the other ghosts who carry outdated attitudes, not in the least Lady Button. At the mention of Havers, she used to look slightly more disgusted than she does on average. Today, she looks down with a certain level of respect at the name.
People really are capable of change, when it matters.
“Ah, come off it,” sneers Julian. “You never saw action, did you? I doubt you’d be able to fist-fight a spider if it pissed in your porridge.”
She stands corrected, some people don't change.
“Tommyrot! Absolute slander! I won’t stand for this, sir. You take those words back or I’ll-”
“Or you’ll what? Bore me to death?” Julian jeers.
That sets them off. Despite Pat’s increasingly higher pitched shouts of “Guys, please”, the remaining ghosts either jump in to defend the Captain, or insult Julian which only escalates things further. Through the din, Alison sighs and prepares the saucepan for soaking in a solution of white vinegar, water, and baking soda. Thank God for the internet.
Suddenly, as she sits down with her Rice Pops, there's a lull in the commotion and all that can be heard is Mary shouting at Thomas, louder than Alison has ever heard her before, “No one on the Hex Factor would sign you! Cheryl would die of bordems.”
Thomas gasps tearfully, “You don’t mean that! Cheryl would love me and my poems.”
He turns to Alison. “If you were to send my work to Lady Cole, she would sing my praises, would she not, Alison, my love?”
She pauses for a long moment, mouth opening and closing like a goldfish as she tried to think of wording that wouldn’t be too harsh but also wouldn’t be an outright lie. Unfortunately, the words never come, and the absence of a response is a response in of itself.
Thomas whimpers and presses his hand to his bullet wound as if it were fresh. He runs to the doorway before spinning back to the rest, throwing his hands to his heart, dramatically.
“I’m going to drown myself in the lake. I mean it this time!” he cries, running off.
Everyone (except poor, oblivious Mike) sighs exasperatedly at this overused threat.
“He must know by now that the whole drowning threat doesn’t have the same effect when one is already dead,” Lady Button remarks.
“Yet he still makes it at any slight provocation,” says the Captain.
“Has he been doing this for the whole two hundred years that he’s been dead?” Alison asks.
“Even before that,” Humphrey replies from under the table, making Alison (and Mary) jump.
In a moment of serendipity, Alison remembers the article she had read the night before the move.
“I guess that explains why people have seen that face in the water, then. God, if I was walking a dog and I saw Thomas’ face I would probably feel a bit sick too!”
She laughs, expecting the other ghosts to jump on the Thomas-bashing train but when she’s hit with an eerie silence she looks away from her breakfast. The ghosts look at each other, pulling faces of confusion.
“Sorry?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Well, you know. Haven’t you seen people coming by here, talking about the ghost sighting in the lake?”
Again, a look of confusion passes over the group’s faces.
“Even if that were true, Thomas can't be seen. He doesn’t have special talents unlike some people I could speak of wa-hey,” the politician says, smugly.
“Could it be possible he has the special ability of specifically being seen in water at night?”
Pat tilts his head and scrunches up his face. “At night? No, he always comes back after a day of moping. I think he’s a bit afraid of the dark.”
That does seem on brand for Thomas, Alison supposes. Why hadn’t she thought about that article when she started seeing the ghosts? Maybe it was the traumatic brain injury and the fear that she was going crazy plus the stress of finding out the house you just inherited from a dead relative you never met is a money pit. Yeah, that could be it. Even now, she can’t remember all the details from that eternity ago, so while the ghosts are pointing fingers at each other, she grabs her laptop (finding Kitty on the way who, after having the biscuit situation explained to her multiple times, rejoins the group) and searches for the article. Pulling it up, she shows it to the ghosts.
They all crowd round to see the laptop and Pat reads it out loud. Mary even helps out at times, sounding out words proudly. The story-time tone of Pat’s voice slowly transitions into one of confusion and nervousness the further into the article they get.
“So, is this not one of you lot?” Alison asks.
“The only one of us who can be seen around here is Fanny. And even then, it’s only ever been through photography,” the Captain says, brow furrowed.
Alison is racking her brain for the most reasonable explanation when Kitty exclaims, “I’ve got it! What if this dog lady is special like you, Alison? What if she can see ghosts?”
That's...not a bad shout actually. Alison’s chest fills with hope that, out there, there is someone like her. That she’s not alone. This article isn’t that old, surely she would be able to track this woman down? She loves Mike with all her heart, but he can’t truly understand what it’s like to see ghosts. To be eternally haunted.
“Now, steady on, Katherine,” says the Captain. “If she did have the ability to see ghosts, then why would she go to the papers? She must have seen ghosts before going on that walk so I doubt it would be news-worthy for her.”
Unfortunately, that does make sense. Unless it had been a particularly deadly walk, causing her to suddenly be able to see ghost without her realising, it just didn’t make sense for her to speak about it publicly. The disappointment that fills Alison’s stomach is soon overpowered by a sudden realisation.
“What if it’s another ghost?” she asks. “What if it isn’t one of you lot and there's been another ghost on these grounds for-” she checks the date the article was published “-at least the past 7 years?”
“Another ghost?” Mike asks in alarm.
At the same time Pat lets out a small, “Crikey.”
Julian scoffs. “And, what? This chap has been skinny dipping for years and never popped round to say ‘hello’?”
“It does seem unlikely that none of us have ever seen a ghost there.”
“Who even goes to the lake aside from Thomas?”
“I visit every inch of this estate at least once a year,” says Lady Button, proudly.
The Captain clears his throat, “I pass by that area sometimes while doing my rounds.”
“And neither of you have ever seen a ghost there?”
“I rather think we would have mentioned it!”
“You know who we need to talk to?” asks Pat.
“Robin!” they all say in unison and hurry out the kitchen, leaving a very concerned Mike and a very confused Mary.
“But what be the Pizza Express?” she asks Mike, who puts another spoonful of soggy cereal into his mouth.
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It takes a while to find Robin. After checking all his usual haunts (ha ha), they finally find him lying face down in the back garden.
All the ghosts start talking at once, in that incredibly unhelpful, inefficient way they do when they have important information to pass on. After some attempted wrangling from the Captain (essentially just him shouting “Simmer, simmer!”), and some more successful wrangling from Pat, the group falls into some semblance of order.
Pat turns to address Robin as the implicit spokesperson of the group, only to find him still lying face down in the mud.
“Uhm, Robin, mate? What’s the haps?”
“Be he dead?”
“How can he be dead, Mary? He's already dead.”
“What if he’s dead-dead? Like what happened to the ghost in Ghostbusters? Who are we gonna call?” Kitty asks, eyes wide. (Alison hadn't considered that, maybe, from a ghost’s perspective, the outcome of Ghostbusters wasn’t exactly ideal. She has some regrets.)
“But he hasn’t been sucked off, has he?” Lady Button says, rolling her eyes.
“Hey!” Robin cries out, indignant, making everyone jump. He gives a very saucy grin. “I definitely been sucked off.”
“Robin!” Alison groans, along with Lady Button and the Captain. Meanwhile Kitty pouts as her questions about what that meant exactly are largely ignored, before Mary takes her aside and explains...something. Alison can’t be sure how that conversation went. Bizarrely, if the confused and slightly green look on Humphrey’s face (from where he’s tucked under Kitty’s arm) is anything to go by.
Julian cackles. “That’s my man!”
The politician holds out a clenched fist for a fit bump (God knows where he learnt that from), which the caveman looks at quizzically. After a moment of hesitation, he gives Julian's knuckles a big, sloppy lick.
It takes a while to calm Julian down enough for him to stop shouting about rabies, and to get Robin to stop laughing raucously for them to get back on track. (Kitty is giving everyone horrified, traumatised looks). Alison starts explaining the situation to Robin with both helpful and unhelpful interjections from the ghosts.
“So, we were wondering,” she finishes, “as the oldest ghost here, if you had any idea what this could be about.”
Robin hums thoughtfully, stroking his beard. Everyone, including Alison, finds themselves leaning in, in anticipation.
“No idea,” Robin chirps, cheerfully. He then turns around and starts legging it away from the house.
“Robin! I say, Robin? What are you doing, man?” shouts the Captain.
“Hunty time!” he shouts back, grin clear in his voice.
With a shared look of ‘ah, what the hell’ everyone starts running after him.
In waves, they arrive at the lake (Robin followed by the Captain with his inescapable two minutes thirty, then Julian and Mary who managed to turn it into a competition that they both visibly regret, a red-faced Pat, and finally Alison along with Lady Button, Kitty and consequentially, Humphrey. They walked because “A lady doesn’t run, Alison”). The first five are congregated by the shore, looking at something. When she gets closer, Alison can see Thomas’ head bobbing comically up and down in the water, with a smarmy look on his face.
“I see you have all come to apologise, and beg for my return,” he calls out. “But I shall not be removed from my solemnity. The injury to my honour was too grave a blow. Unless, sweet Alison-”
“Nope!” Alison interrupts before something disturbing leaves his lips.
“We’re not here for you, silly,” Kitty giggles. “There might be another ghost!”
That piques the poet’s interest. “What?”
Pat begins the explanation again, but as with most of Pat’s explanations it is riddled with anecdotes that aren’t strictly relevant.
Grunting in frustration, Robin shouts over Pat: “Lady see ghost. Not one of us. In the lake. Find ghost.”
“Perhaps Robin’s crude form of the English language has its uses,” Lady Button murmurs to the Captain who had been ready to step in if the rambling got too much.
“Quite,” he replies, an air of amusement about his voice. His expression then switches to business. “Alright, everyone, here’s the plan. Robin and Mary, you are to recce the first quadrant. Julian and Thomas, the second. I’ll do the third with Kitty and Humphrey, and Alison, you can head the final division consisting of Fanny and Pat. All clear?”
He's met with a resounding, “No!”
“Blasted civvies,” he mutters. “You two go look over there, you two over there, I’ll stay here with Kitty et cetera -”
“Oi, that’s head cetera to you!”
“Yes, thank you Humphrey. And finally, Alison you take those two over there. Understood?”
Kitty replies with an energetic “Understood!” while the others agree with an eye roll and a shrug.
“Excellent. Operation: Squirrel is a go.”
The respective groups trundle off to their assigned areas. Slightly disappointed that nobody asked about the squirrel metaphor, the Captain directs his squad to cover their quadrant as efficiently as possible. It's hard to know what to look for, really. The Captain isn’t even sure he believes what Ms Scott had claimed. It all seems rather fanciful to him. Still, he isn’t the sort of man to attack a task half-heartedly, a trait he takes great pride in.
He is poking through some reeds when a splash distracts him from his thoughts. He looks over to see Robin doing a furious doggy paddle, and Mary standing triumphant on the bank, hiding her laughter behind her hand. The Captain tuts and mutters, “Amateurs.”
At that moment, a scream comes from Alison’s squadron.
“Oh, my word, what is that?”
At the sound of Fanny’s distress, the Captain starts sprinting over to the fourth quadrant, the rest of the ghosts hot on his heels.
Alison, Pat and Lady Button stand under an awfully familiar tree. A tall, withered sycamore whose roots stretch desperately towards the water, a tangled mess of knots. At the sight of the tree, the Captain slows as an uneasy feeling settles in his stomach. He hasn’t been to this exact location for over eighty years. And for good reason. It's just his luck that it should be the site of their current mystery. The implications of these coincidences are too great for him to think about now. No, all that matters right now is the safety of his fellow ghosts.
Picking up his pace again, he realises that the others have overtaken him and are already at Ground Zero. They all seem to be simultaneously leaning over the water and trying to lean away in horror.
“There be a devil in the water,” Mary whispers, furiously doing the sign of the cross.
“Is that a face?”
“He looks so sad!”
“Golly, that sure is spooky,” Pat stammers out in an awful American accent. That draws some questioning looks, but Pat’s peculiar fear response isn’t anyone’s priority right now.
Alison attempts a laugh, but the fear in her voice means it falls flat. “That’s funny coming from you guys.”
Pushing his way to the front of the group, the Captain finally sees what the fuss is all about. Around a foot below the surface of the murky water, something is suspended. The more he looks at it, the Captain can begin to make out a face: the shadow of a nose, a mouth stretched open as if calling out for help, dark, terrified eyes and a cloud of hair swaying in time to the water. With each clarifying feature, the fear that has clogged his throat tightens its grip around his oesophagus. Though he wants nothing more than to look away, the idea of taking his eyes off the face for even a moment terrifies him.
“What do we do?”
“Gee, I don't know partner. Cap?”
That snaps him out of his fear. His family needs him.
“Let’s be logical about this. We have to rescue this person, there's no question about it. We don’t leave a man behind. And as only a ghost can touch another ghost, that rules out any involvement from Alison. Someone is going to have to – oh Good Lord it’s coming closer!” His voice goes up to an octave even he didn’t know he could reach.
His yell startles everyone else to scamper as quickly as they can away from the lake, screaming. But in the stampede, the Captain gets knocked over by Kitty and his blasted knees can’t get him up quick enough. He is left to watch as the dark shape gets closer and closer to the surface. It isn’t a smooth journey, it almost looks as if it’s struggling. A brief impulse to help is quickly suppressed by his survival instinct as his heart thumps loudly in his chest.
A hand bursts free of the lake. It flails about wildly for a second before hitting the grass on the shore and grasping it tightly. Another hand joins it. Finally, a head emerges, but no loud gasp for breath is heard. This time, when the impulse to help flashes across the Captain’s mind, he doesn’t push it away. In a moment of bravery, he grabs onto the wrists of the ghost and calls for assistance.
Robin and Pat add an extra pair of hands each to opposite arms and, as a unit, they drag a thrashing body onto the lakeshore. The ghost is breathing very quickly now, but not in the deep, gasping fashion you would expect from a drowning person. He – for it is now clear it is a man – lies face down in the grass, clad in a green uniform of which the top half is so wet it is closer to black.
Everyone is quiet for a good few seconds, getting their collective breath back and letting the adrenaline course through their blood.
“Is he...” Alison looks on worriedly.
“Mate?” Pat says shakily (American accent gone, thankfully), tapping the man on the shoulder.
Laying a gentle hand on the man’s left shoulder, Pat flips him over, remembering to support his head as it flops back. The ghost shields his face with his hand, squinting at the sun as if in pain.
“What’s your name?” Kitty asks softly. The stranger removes his hand from his face to see where the voice had come from.
“Anthony Havers.”
For a second, everyone (including the man himself) is confused as Havers hadn’t opened his mouth to reply. Then, they all turn to the one who had.
The Captain stares in shock at the ghost of his former lieutenant.