𝐇𝐨𝐦𝐞┃ Anthony Lockwood┃2┃

Chapter Thirty Eight - Elegantly Eating

None of the others heard anything – neither the tuneless whistling nor the sound of the industrious knife. The skull in Nola's rucksack must have sensed it too, of course, but it was still huffy with her. She tried rousing it, but it refused to answer her whispered questions.

The group gathered silently in the hall. Lockwood stood at the door with his ear to a glass pane and his rapier held ready. Even up close, the glass was jet black. Whatever was in there sucked all light into itself, and let nothing out again.

"I can still hear it." Nola said. Every now and then, the chopping paused, as if the knife was forcing its way through something particularly hard, but it always resumed.

Lockwood's eyes met Nola's. "Then let's see who it is who's joined us."

He reached for the handle, turned it, sprang forward into the room. As he did so, the sounds cut out. Nola was at his side, a salt bomb in her small fist. George and Kipps were pressing at their back. They all came to a halt, surveying the empty kitchen, where the sharp shadows of the cypress trees hung in moonlight on the counter tops, and the candles flickered gently around their circle on the cracked linoleum floor.

"Nothing." Kipps breathed.

Nola's own breath had been pent up. She forced it out hard. "It stopped, the sound, as soon as we came in."

Lockwood touched her arm. "It's playing tricks, which is to be expected."

"Nothing." Kipps said heavily. He looked at Nola.

"I did hear it." She snapped. The sudden deflation that they had all felt on entering the room had made them edgy. George was swearing colourfully under his breath, Holly shaking.

"No one is saying you didn't, James." Of all of them, only Lockwood seemed unaffected. He remained quite still, eyes narrowed, gazing around the kitchen. Then, he clipped his rapier to his belt and glanced at his thermometer. "Temp is normal." He said. "There's no visual phenomena that I can see."

"You're forgetting the glass door." Nola said. "No light shone through it a moment ago."

"True." He rummaged in a pocket of his coat, producing a paper bag of chocolates. "Everyone take two, and let's get the thermoses out. High time for a cup of tea."

They stood there, drinking, calming down. It's never good to let your emotions get the better of you in a haunted house. Ghosts feed off them and grow strong.

"So, it's nine-o-three p.m., and that's our first proper phenomenon." Lockwood said. "Looks as if Fittes and Barnes were right – this thing mainly manifests via sounds. That means our Listener will is going to bear the brunt of it. You okay with that, James?"

Nola nodded. "That's why you brought me in."

"I know, but you need to be happy with it."

Her heart was still pounding, but she kept her voice cool and professional. "It's not a problem."

Lockwood nodded slowly. "Okay... So we go on much as before. We'll meet again at eleven thirty, see if anyone has a clue to the Source. Those of us on stationary posts can swap rooms then. Meanwhile we call to each other whenever we have the slightest doubt about anything."

One after the other, everyone slipped away – everyone except George and Nola. They remained standing in the kitchen. It seemed the obvious place for her to concentrate her efforts, and George had clearly had a similar idea. From a bag, he brought out the odd little contrivance that Nola had seen before – a silver bell suspended from a wooden frame on a lattice of thin wires. With extreme care, elbows out wide, fingers clinically spread, he placed it on the worktop in a shaft of moonlight and stood back to consider it.