Archive of Our Own

“What the fuck are you doing here?”

This was how John Silver was greeted when he pulled up into the drive of a beautiful old mansion outside of Charleston, South Carolina. The house, lovingly restored recently, dated back to the seventeenth or eighteenth century and was surrounded by fifty acres of woodland. At least that's what the brochure said. The brochure had left out the part where the house had been for sale on-and-off for years and had developed quite a reputation in the area.

The current owners were selling the place – only months after they'd moved in – and their real estate agent, Eleanor Guthrie, had called Silver in to help. She hoped that if he managed to appease the spirits which seemed to be plaguing the house the stories would finally dry up and the house would sell at a better price. Silver had been touring America for new footage for his Youtube channel, Shivers With Silver, and he needed something for his Deep South episode. Eleanor's timing was perfect.

Or it would have been, if grumpy old Dr Flint hadn't been standing near the house, glaring at Silver with the face of a bulldog chewing a wasp. Shame, really – he had such a pretty face when he wasn't scowling.

“You the owner, mate? Tough luck,” Silver said with a smirk as he left his car, exaggerating his Australian twang just a bit. He knew it pissed Flint off, and he loved the way Flint's face twitched whenever he teased him.

Nobody seemed to be able to make Flint angry like Silver could, which was maybe why they were always up against each other on paranormal convention panels and radio interviews. Silver didn't mind. It was fun, good publicity, and he enjoyed that little spark in Flint's eyes when their gazes met.

“I was called here to prove this is a hoax,” Flint growled. “Can't do that with you sniffing around for your pathetic videos, so clear off.”

“Hey, I was called here to help the spirits pass on,” Silver said. “It was all scheduled. Wanna check in with Eleanor and see which of us got the day wrong, mate?”

“On it,” Flint muttered, his phone already stuck to his ear. “Eleanor? That wanker John Silver's just shown up at the hou– what?! Oh, so this was on purpose? Are you fucking kidding me?!” Flint turned to Silver, lips curled in a snarl. “She wants us to work on it together.”

“Hmm, a special episode with Dr Sceptic.” Silver nodded appreciatively. “I bet my subscribers would love that.”

“Forget it,” Flint snarled, hanging up the phone and turning away. “I don't need the aggro.”

“Aw c'mon, are you really going to chicken out, mate?”

“I'm not your mate,” Flint snapped, stalking to his car.

Silver followed him, pointing his GoPro at Flint. “And here you go, dear viewers, this is Dr James Flint, a really posh psychologist from London who spends his free time debunking supernatural investigations 'cause he's deathly afraid they might be real. I bet you've already seen him be all condescending in interviews. Well apparently we were supposed to work on this house together, but I think he got scared of what we might find and now he's pissing off home.”

Flint whirled around and strode back towards Silver. “For your information I've been investigating so-called hauntings for 20 years. I proved each and every one of them was fake. And I didn't do it for five minutes of Internet fame like you, but to actually help the people living in those places, who're usually in need of treatment, not exorcism.”

“Oops, ladies and gents, we woke up the shrink! So tell us Doc, why are you letting your dislike of little old me get in the way of helping the current owners of this house? Is that really professional? I bet they have tons of issues that are just waiting to be resolved when you prove that this house isn't actually haunted.” Flint glared at him, a muscle twitching in his cheek. “Not only that, but it's an opportunity to prove to the Internet that ghosts don't exist. Are you gonna pass that up?”

“Fine.” Flint went back to his car and popped the boot open. “But I swear if you fuck me over in editing, I'll become your worst nightmare for the rest of your career.”

Silver grinned into his camera. “Aw, listen to that everyone, I already have a groupie! And I promise, Doc, if you can prove it's fake, I'll upload the video for the world to see. And while you get all your stuff ready, I'll go take a look at the place, show my viewers what we're getting into today.”

He filmed the trees surrounding the house, pointing out the gnarled, sprawling live oaks covered in a strange cobweb-like growth – Flint muttered that it was called Spanish moss – before turning towards the house. It was a broad red brick house with a pitched porch held up by Greek revival columns. It looked old, but not particularly spooky from the outside.

In the meantime, Flint stalked back and forth between his car and the house, carrying boxes of equipment. Silver came closer and took a shot of the contents of Flint's boxes: cameras of all kinds, motion sensors, EMF meters, humidity detectors, even what looked like a Geiger counter.

“That all you have?” Flint asked, nodding towards Silver's GoPro.

“Hey, it's all I need, mate,” Silver said with a grin. “I'm a medium, I can hear and feel the spirits. Most of it gets captured on camera, if you know how to look.”

“You can't seriously call yourself a medium because your so-called haunted doll video became an overnight Internet hit. Anyone could tell it was fake.”

And it had been – sort of. Silver had felt a presence, heard children singing and running around in the middle of the night, witnessed strange shadows moving in the old house he'd lived in while he was at uni. But you couldn't sell that to an audience, so he'd dramatised things somewhat, given the viewers something to focus on, and the old doll he'd found in the attic had done a good job. But fucking Flint knew his stuff, apparently, and had been hounding him about the doll ever since they'd first met.

“Whatever, mate,” Silver said with a somewhat forced chuckle. He fished the keys Eleanor had left with him out of his back pocket and opened the door to the house.

The first thing to hit him was the smell. It was a bit musty, like all old homes, but there was something else, too. Sulphurous, smoky, biting.

“Smell that?”

“All I can smell is your tacky aftershave.”

“Then don't stand so close to me,” Silver said with a chuckle. Flint was standing close. For all his bluster about hating Silver, Flint bloody loved to get all up in his space. Not that Silver had ever complained about that. If anything, he complained – loudly and frequently to his roommate Max – that Flint was as much in denial about wanting Silver as he was about the existence of ghosts.

“We should set up a base in one of the quieter rooms,” Flint said. “Nothing much ever happens in the kitchen, according to Eleanor.”

“You do that, Scully. I'm gonna get shots of the lower levels.” Silver smirked to himself at the indignant expression on Flint's face at his X-Files reference, and started taking footage of the broad staircase that led up to the first floor. The house was panelled in fancy sculpted wood, but you could barely tell through the layer of boring taupe paint. Silver wondered if that was even still trendy.

“The owners of the house say there are a few hotspots for paranormal activity,” Silver told his viewers as he moved through the entrance hallway to the dining room, which was filled with faux-aged wooden furniture.

“One of these hotspots is here. See this?” He filmed the debris of a chair laying near one of the walls, then up to a place where the wallpaper had been ripped and the plaster dented by an impact. “And that? Apparently the chair flew clear across the room and smashed on the wall a couple days ago. Pretty angry spirit, I bet.”

“Or one of the kids had a temper tantrum and blamed the ghost.” Silver's hand trembled as Flint suddenly spoke up behind him.

“Actually, Dr Flint, have you ever heard of telekinesis? There are some theories out there that poltergeists are actually teenagers discovering their psychic powers and acting out subconsciously.”

“That's a Stephen King novel,” Flint replied drily. “An old one, at that.”

A gust of cold air blew around Silver, wafting another smell over to him. Thick, salty, metallic. “Hm, I've just experienced something,” he announced to his camera. “Weird smells, draughts coming from nowhere.”

“The insulation's crap in old houses, and the smell likely comes from corroded pipes.” Flint stood back from where he'd set up a camera. “Now let's get out of here, I've set up motion detectors in case the chairs decide to rearrange themselves in a pyramid on the table.”

“That another Stephen King reference?”

“Spielberg.” Flint started to set up more cameras and motion detectors in the hallways.

“For someone who hates the supernatural, you're a bit of a horror buff.” Silver couldn't help it – he enjoyed the banter with this man. There was something about those terse, biting tones that sent fire coursing down Silver's spine.

“I don't have a problem with the supernatural as long as people know it's fiction. Besides, it makes my job easier to know the classics.”

Silver raised his eyebrows. “How so?”

“People don't have that much imagination. They tend to use horror movie tropes for their hoaxes. Like that fucking doll of yours.”

Silver's mouth twisted, but Flint was already in the kitchen before Silver could find a properly scathing retort. It didn't help that Flint was spot on. Well that little exchange certainly wouldn't be in the final cut of Silver's video if Silver wanted to keep his viewers.

When Silver got into the kitchen, Flint had set up several laptops on the table and worktops. Most screens were separated out into nine smaller windows; others showed EMF readings information about temperature and humidity. One computer already showed the feeds from the cameras Flint had set up downstairs. Some of the feeds were even showing infrared activity.

“Fucking big investment to prove that something doesn't exist,” Silver commented.

“The price of science.”

Heavy steps thudded up the stairs, then echoed on the ceiling above them.

“Did you hear that, people?” Silver gasped into his camera. “If you didn't, there were footsteps on the stairs and on the first floor – you heard them too, didn't you?” he asked Flint.

Flint looked reluctant, brows creased in a scowl. “Yeah.”

“And the owners are away, right?”

“Yeah, I watched them leave myself.”

“Right.” Silver turned to his camera. “So we're getting some activity here. We've been told the stairs and the first floor are hotspots, I think we can pretty much say it's confirmed.”

“On the other hand the cameras downstairs, even those pointing at the stairs, didn't catch anything,” Flint said. “Must have just been the house settling.”

Silver turned on him. “The house settl– are you shitting me?!”

“You know what happens to wood when the weather turns cold and dry, right? You said yourself there was a draught.”

“And here we have Dr Flint, ladies and gentlemen,” Silver smugly told his camera, “explaining how wood shrivels up to an embarrassingly small size whenever there's a cold draft. What would we do without science?”

Flint glowered at him. “How does anyone even take you seriously?”

“Because I can recognise noises like the one we just heard for what it really is: something was trying to communicate just now.”

“Fine, let's go upstairs then. I'll set up cameras and catch the fucking prankster running around up there.”

“I thought it was just the house settling,” Silver said as he followed Flint up the stairs. “For a so-called scientist you really like to make shit up as you go along.”

Silver wanted to chuckle when Flint flipped two fingers at him, but the laughter died in his throat as he got to the upstairs landing. It was a long corridor with doors on either sides. It looked innocuous enough, but just standing there made the hairs at the back of Silver's neck prickle and stand on end.

The smell was different again here: some sort of perfume, light and girly, perhaps orange blossom. It mingled with another scent, dark and rotting, that made Silver's throat want to close up.

“This is your culprit,” Flint said, pointing at a half-open window behind them. “There's a draught between these two windows, it's making this door rattle.” He pulled one of the doors open. When the wind whispered in the branches, it slowly fell closed with a creak.

Silver scoffed, although he was starting to feel mildly nauseous. “Oh don't be so stupid! That sounded nothing like what we heard!”

“Oh yeah? D'you know what's stupid?” Flint said, fixing a camera in an upper corner of the corridor. “Photographing so-called orbs and claiming they're dead people's souls.”

“Here we go.” Silver rolled his eyes, trying to keep his mind off the weird dizziness that was taking over. “What are they then?”

“Dust. Steam. It's basic optics. Do you get any physics classes, Down Under?”

“Nah mate,” Silver said through a dry, choking sensation. Fuck, but he wanted to throw up. How was Flint not feeling any of this? “Can't learn physics cause our heads are upside down.”

“You're hilarious.” Flint stalked towards the other end of the corridor.

Silver glanced at the door that had just been pushed closed by the wind, and a shudder went up his spine. The smell of orange blossom was stronger here.

“Okay so I'm not feeling too clever,” Silver told his camera. Flint had pulled open the door to another room and disappeared inside. “Sick, dizzy, choking – there's this floral perfume too. Dr Sceptic is quick to dismiss it, but spirits often communicate through scents. This room… something's going on there. Let's have a look inside.”

The moment Silver pushed open the door, a suffocating sensation gripped his throat and chest while cold sweat beaded down his back. He flipped on the light. It was a nice room, if you were a little girl and liked pink sheets and glittery unicorns all over your wall. Silver blinked, and for a second he saw a different room, painted all in white with an elegant four-poster bed, crisp linens and a dressing table laden with vials.

Then it was all gone and he was staring at the little girl's room again. The smell of orange blossom turned to rot. There was a creaking at the door's hinges, although they hadn't moved.

“What're you doing?” Flint asked in the distance, but Silver could barely hear him. He could barely hold the camera without trembling.

You're not to leave this room!

The voice, harsh and low, burst into Silver's head like a punch. His throat throbbed and closed up as though a vice was tightening around it. Then footsteps rushed towards Silver, a terrifying gallop. He let out a cry, jumping back from the door, and smacked his back into the opposite wall.

Flint strode towards him. “What the fuck's up with you?”

“Didn't you hear it? The man– I think it was a man… someone ran at me…”

“I only heard you shriek and the door slam,” Flint said, looking him over with puzzled eyes. He turned towards the room Silver had just left. The door was closed. Silver didn't remember even touching it.

“I felt sick and dizzy and I couldn't breathe–”

Flint rolled his eyes and shook his head. “Classic panic attack.”

“No! Fuck!” Silver shouted. “There was this smell… and I saw the room as it was back in the day.”

“What day?”

“How the fuck would I know, I'm not a historian! There was a four-poster bed.”

Flint opened the door to the dreaded room. “Oh yeah, very scary, if you're afraid of stuffed toys. Maybe there's a haunted My Little Pony who's got it in for you.”

“Dickhead,” Silver spat at him, and Flint had the gall to smirk. Fuck, the man had bad timing. Of all times and places Flint could have chosen to look suggestive, did it really have to be now that Silver was fighting to catch his breath?

“Fancy a cup of tea?” Flint asked, his tone softening. “I've got everything set up here.”

Silver looked down at his camera, still pointed at Flint, then at the gloomy corridor. He really ought to get more footage of the house, but a warm cup of tea was much more inviting, and so far the kitchen had felt like the least threatening room in the house.

“Go on then,” Silver breathed. He was just doing it because he needed to be away from this hotspot, and definitely not because Flint looked particularly handsome when he wasn't grinding his teeth.

It was a relief to sit down in the kitchen. Only once he got off his feet did Silver realise that the nagging pain around his knee had started up again. It was one of the many strange and unexplained things his body did – the pain appeared and disappeared on a whim, usually mild but sometimes so crippling that Silver could barely walk. Exams hadn't shown anything abnormal; his doctor had dismissed it as sciatica. Whatever the fuck it was, this wasn't the right moment. Silver reached for a bottle of Advil in his bag and swallowed a pill with a gulp of tea.

“Please don't tell me you're getting high,” Flint groaned. He was sitting at his computers, reviewing footage in the corridors.

“Christ, loosen up.” Silver shook the bottle so Flint could see the label. “It's just a paink– did you see that?”

“See what?”

“On your video. That door slammed when I ran out of the room, and I didn't touch it.”

Flint played the video back, and frowned. “Well we had established that the draught was pushing the door shut.”

“It slammed.” Silver said flatly. The amount of denial a sceptic was capable of astounded him, sometimes. “The only way the wind could have made that door slam is if there had been a hurricane, which there isn't.”

Flint wasn't listening. He'd paused the video on a picture taken from the landing, looking all the way down the corridor. It showed Flint standing by the girl's bedroom, peering inside, and Silver backed up against the wall opposite.

“What?” Silver asked, moving closer.

“I can't make out what this is.” Flint pointed out an area beside him on the video which glowed with bluish light. It practically looked like an aura.

Silver leaned over Flint's shoulder to get a better look. “What happens on the next pictures?”

Flint played the recording image by image. The glow changed shape, elongating, widening, but never really taking an obvious form. It disappeared after a while, when Flint came closer to Silver.

“Any ideas?” Flint said, looking up at Silver. Their faces were close, much closer than they'd ever been. In the yellowish light of the kitchen, Flint's eyes were a deep green. The bastard was fucking gorgeous.

“Uh...” Silver took a step back, licking his lips. “Yeah, actually.” He picked up his GoPro and propped it on the table in front of Flint, skipping back to the same moment Flint had captured. He slowed down when he started to see the blue light beside Flint, and tracked back image by image.

On the pictures, Flint was facing him, looking smug, with the pink room brightly lit behind him. And beside him – behind him – was that shape lurking in the dark corridor.

“It looks like some sort of glare,” Flint said. “But from what? The light in the room is a warm yellow, this is bluish like a screen or… the moon, perhaps.”

“Black moon tonight, mate,” Silver said instantly. He might be an amateur compared to Flint, but he knew to look out for that kind of stuff.

“Then what–”

Flint went quiet and Silver drew his hand away from the camera as if he'd been burned. On the picture Silver had tracked back to, a figure stood beside Flint, three dark blotches where its eyes and mouth should be. Silver flipped to the previous picture. The figure was a profile now, mouth wide open, roaring at Flint. It looked furious.

“Jesus Christ!” Flint breathed.

More footsteps suddenly thumped on the upper floor, running. There was a scuffle on what sounded like the landing; the ceiling rattled, mugs shaking in the cupboards, lights flickering. Then someone thundered down the stairway, and silence fell.

Flint had turned white as a sheet.

“Probably just the house settling,” Silver told him, patting his shoulder.

Flint scowled, then turned to his screens and selected the cameras filming the hall downstairs, the corridor upstairs and the stairwell.

“Did you notice?” Flint said as he replayed the footage. “Last time it sounded like someone was going up. This time someone was running down.”

“Or falling down. And there was some kind of struggle upstairs, too.”

“Shit, look,” Flint pointed out a white form lying at the foot of the stairs. A hand was sticking out at an odd angle. “Maybe our prankster got more than he bargained for.”

The entrance hall was empty when Flint and Silver hurried out of the kitchen. Flint knelt at the spot by the stairs where they'd seen the crumpled body. He touched the ground, then shone an infrared light around, on the floor, up the stairs.

“No blood or even scuff marks – I doubt anyone actually fell down these,” Flint muttered, taking off his protective glasses. “Maybe they were hiding somewhere down here and wanted to make us believe they took a fall.”

“What Dr Flint is forgetting,” Silver said into his camera, “is that the motion detectors didn't go off to signal anyone coming into the room, either from the stairs or from the ground floor. Nor do we have footage of a prankster coming to lie on the ground.”

Flint took a deep, shaky breath and looked up at Silver. Apparently he didn't have a smart comeback anymore, and this wasn't really comforting. Silver had seen many cases, and experienced all sorts of unsettling phenomena, but never anything so fucking vivid.

“All right,” Flint said. “You're the medium. You tell me what happened.”

Silver grinned into his camera nervously. “Ah. All right… I guess it's time to try and talk to the spirits manifesting here.” He closed his eyes and called out into the darkness around him. “Hello, my name is John Silver. I'm sorry to disturb your peace, but I've come to this house in to understand why you're still lingering here and to help you over to another realm. Does anyone want to comm–”

Icy fingers touched the small of Silver's back and he whirled around with a yelp. His eyes flew open, his gaze falling to the bottom of the stairs. A girl lay there, dark hair splayed around her, a staring brown eye fixed on Silver. A scream was welling in Silver's chest, but he clamped his mouth shut.

“I'm seeing a girl,” he whispered. “Just like we saw on the surveillance camera. She's lying at the bottom of the stairs and looks really badly injured.” He glanced at Flint. “Don't you see her? She's right next to you.”

Flint stared back at him, terror in his eyes, then glanced down at his feet, where the girl's skirts fanned out. Her hand was inches from his ankle. “No,” he murmured. “I don't see anything.”

“She has dark hair and a young face… possibly a teenager. She's wearing a… a pale blue dress with some sort of pattern. Sort of… Elizabeth Swan in Pirates of the Caribbean style dress.” At Flint's raised eyebrows, Silver pouted. “What? I know fuck-all about old-timey fashion, okay?”

In the distance, a single note rang out. Silver had seen a piano in the living room. He glanced at Flint. “Did you hear that?” Flint nodded. “We're hearing some kind of piano–”

“More like a harpsichord,” Flint said, glancing towards the living room. The note sounded out again. Flint was right, it didn't sound quite like a piano, sharper, more distorted.

Silver turned back to where the girl's body had been, but it was gone. The note reverberated in the house a third time. “I can't see her anymore, but I–”

A howl rang out all through the house, echoing, making the lights flicker. Silver jumped, and Flint startled too. “Fuck, did you hear that?” Flint shook his head. “Why did you jump, then?”

“Cause you did,” Flint hissed. “Christ, this is coming from you, isn't it? All this is fucking mass hysteria, and I'm letting you drag me into it…”

“Yeah right, it's all in our heads!” Silver spat, before turning back to his camera. “I heard a man screaming… I think it's the girl's name, starts with an A…”

The note sounded out again and again, hammered out slowly and deliberately. From the corner of his eye, Silver saw the silhouette of the girl moving into the living room. It moved… wrong, in a disjointed, dragging amble.

“Fuck, I saw her go in there,” Silver said, aware that his voice had gone high and reedy.

“Calm down. Breathe.” Flint clapped a hand between Silver's shoulder-blades, and for a moment, he did breathe more easily. “Maybe we should get out of here and come back in the daytime.”

“See that, dear viewers,” Silver told his camera, though his fingers were shaking. “Even the sceptic isn't feeling up to facing the spirits in this place.” The note rang out faster, more insistent. Flint's fingers grabbed at the back of Silver's shirt; Silver could feel him practically vibrate with fright.

“I don't care how it looks,” Flint said. “You're terrified, and we can't get any work done with you in this state.”

“Big words for someone whose knees are knocking together,” Silver managed.

“Fear's contagious. Come on.”

Silver let himself be pushed towards the door, and relief flooded him at the idea they were going to be out of here. He didn't have to stay in this house. They had plenty of footage, and would likely have even more when Flint came and got his kit back.

A shot rang out. Silver's camera clattered to the ground as Flint pushed him flat against the wall, half-covering him with his body. The sulphurous smell Silver had first encountered filled the room again. Gunpowder.

“Fuck, let's get out of here,” Flint hissed against Silver's skin, and tried to disentangle himself from Silver. Silver didn't understand why Flint couldn't, at first, until he realised that he'd grabbed fistfuls of Flint's shirt and had no intention of letting go.

There was a sound in the hallway, heavy cloth rustling on the floorboards, soft footsteps. Flint stiffened. “Did you hear that?”

“Someone's coming,” Silver quavered.

“I'd swear she said my name.”

A form appeared in the hallway, the silhouette of a woman. She was regal, dressed in a long pale dress. Her dark hair was drawn up in a tight bun, but the back seemed messy, glistening with dark ooze. Silver glanced up at Flint, reading a terror in his face that went beyond simply being spooked. It was the terror of someone seeing their childhood nightmares come to life.

James.

This time, Silver heard her voice too. It sent goosebumps up his back.

“No,” Flint gasped. “No, I can't–”

The spirit turned to them, revealing a gaping bullet hole in her right temple. Her eyes widened, her mouth fell open, pretty features distorting in an expression of agony. She held out her hand.

James.

Flint yanked open the front door and within moments he'd dragged Silver out onto the porch. He made a mad dash away from the house, slipping on the dewy porch. Silver tried to grab him, but too late – Flint went barrelling down the steps and rolled onto the path in front of the house.

“Shit, you okay?” Silver called out from the porch.

Flint stood up, lips white, face twitching. He ran a hand through his dishevelled coppery locks. His eyes still darted to the open door behind Silver, wide and horrified.

“I don't… what the fuck was that?” he shouted, turning to Silver. “Why was she calling me? What did she want?!”

Silver's leg was killing him again – maybe from being jostled when Flint had dragged him out of there. Now that they were outside, the oppressive fear had dissolved. Silver turned back to the house. The entrance hall looked empty, peaceful.

“Well, those are usually questions I ask spirits if I get a chance,” Silver said with a weak chuckle.

Flint heavily sat down on the porch steps, visibly trembling. “Do they usually call you by your name?”

“Ah, no. Usually they're sort of stuck in their own world.” Silver sat down on the steps too, pressing his shoulder against Flint's. “They don't really recognise new people, they tend to confuse them with ones from their own time.”

“What are the odds that she knew someone called James?”

“Yeah, it's such a unique name. So uncommon.”

Flint rolled his eyes. “Eleanor said this place used to belong to the Lord Governor back in the eighteenth century. Except the area was pretty much razed in some kind of massacre.”

“It didn't feel like a massacre in there, though,” Silver said. “One of them fell down the stairs, the other was shot – not necessarily in that order. It sort of… it has a feel of a family drama, not war.”

“I'm not even going to ask what you're basing your theories on.”

“Pure gut,” Silver said, and shot Flint a grin. “I have a pretty good gut, though.”

Flint smiled at him thinly, colour slowly coming back to his face. “All right. So what does your gut tell you to do now?”

“Well, for one, get my camera back. Fucking expensive piece of equipment, you know.”

Flint chuckled and shook his head, nudging Silver's shoulder gently. He felt really fucking nice. Silver's gut also told him that, were he to invite Flint back to his motel in their adrenaline-fuelled state, things might end up as hot and heavy as his dirtiest fantasies.

But something niggled at him, buzzed around his mind, set his teeth on edge. “We're not finished here,” he said. “Whatever's going on in this house, it needs to be resolved. You said you didn't want the owners to live in fear, well, now you know why they do.”

Flint gave a long-suffering sigh and nodded. “But I don't think I can actually do anything. Do you think you can?”

“Yeah, maybe. I mean we need to understand what went on, and why these spirits are still hanging around there. You could use the fact that they mistake you for someone they knew to our advantage.”

“What, and be bait for angry spirits? No thanks.”

“You don't know that they were angry with you. I mean, neither of us were attacked, except–”

“Except?”

“When I was in the kid's room. I heard footsteps running out of there and then a man's voice shouted something… he didn't want her to leave. That felt threatening, much more than the dead women.”

“So there's a third? Someone we haven't seen.”

“I think we did see him, mate. He was standing right next to you in the upstairs corridor, looking pissed.”

Flint shivered. “I was trying to forget about that.”

“Welcome to the paranormal, mate.” Silver patted his thigh; Flint didn't seem to dislike the attention. “So, you ready to go back in there, or did the draught shrivel up your balls?”

Flint shot Silver grin that could only be described as feral. Fuck, going back to the motel with Flint was more and more tempting. “Don't you worry about my balls.”

An embarrassing giggle escaped Silver, and he gave Flint's knee a squeeze. “All right. Then let's try this again, shall we? No more mass hysteria.”

The house was quiet when they walked back in. Silver picked up his camera from the floor and dusted it off. This time, Flint didn't wander away on his own; he kept close, eyes darting around the entrance hall.

“Well, after a little break outside we've come back into the house,” Silver told his camera. “I'm not gonna hide it, we both had a bit of a freak out back there when we saw a woman walk around the hall with a bullet hole in her head. She seemed to be calling Flint by his name, though I pointed out the name James is pretty much common as muck. Anyhow, the good doctor was brave enough to face round two with the spirits in here. A word, Dr Flint?” Silver tilted the camera to film Flint's stern, tense face.

“Why the fuck are you still filming this?” Flint snarled.

“For science, Doc,” Silver said with a grin. Flint rolled his eyes. “Maybe we should go see the room with the piano? We were getting a lot of noise from there.”

But the room was quiet, practically uninspiring. The small upright piano was set in a corner, its lid closed. It looked new and pretty cheap, probably for the family's little girl to practice on. The sofa was beige leather, modern, to go with the steel-and-glass coffee table. If Silver had been looking for a mysterious atmosphere, here wasn't the place.

“Hey,” Flint hissed, and John turned around. Opposite the living room was the dining room. One of the chairs lay upturned in the middle of the floor.

And then it wasn't a chair anymore. It was the older woman, sprawled on her back, a pool of blood dripping from under her head. Her eyes were open, blank. Silver shuddered and looked up at Flint – but Flint couldn't see her.

“Uh… I'm seeing the woman with a gunshot wound lying on the floor in the dining room,” Silver explained, for his viewers as much as for Flint's benefit. “We knew it was a hotspot, so I suppose something happened to her there. Can you really not smell that, Doc?”

“Maybe a whiff… it smells like fireworks, doesn't it?”

“Yeah. Gunpowder, I think.” Silver stiffened. The woman wasn't on the floor anymore, she was standing in the doorway, staring at them with wide eyes. Her mouth moved, but no sound came out.

“Do you see her?” Flint asked. Silver nodded. “Where?”

“Doorway,” Silver said. The woman was shouting at him now, holding out a hand to him. “She's trying to tell me something, but I can't hear her voice.”

The chair on the dining room floor suddenly dragged its way across the floorboards, moving faster and faster under their eyes. Silver and Flint barely had time to move out of the way before it went smashing into the piano behind them. A discordant chord rang out through the sound of splintering wood.

Flint stood there transfixed, fists balled. “Can you tell why they're doing this?”

“Some spirits are really territorial, but this is beyond anything I've ever seen. Usually it's like… whispers telling us to go away, knocking, disappearing objects, that sort of–”

A note came out of the piano, the same as before. The young girl sat on the stool, her head hanging off her neck at an odd angle, playing a single note in spite of the keyboard cover. At Flint's sharp intake of breath – he'd seen her, Silver knew – her head twisted around in a sickening movement, her big eyes fixing on him.

James.

The word echoed all through the room. The curtains fluttered lightly, although there was no wind.

“I'm here.” Flint's voice trembled, but he took a step to the centre of the room. “If you have something to tell me, I'm listening.”

The older woman was standing right next to Flint, speaking into his ear.

“The other one is trying to tell you something,” Silver said. “Can you hear her?”

Flint shook his head. The woman's face crumpled in frustration, her mouth opened wider. She was shouting, but the only sound in the room was Silver and Flint's breathing and the rhythmic banging on that one piano note.

The girl at the piano turned around, opened her mouth. The sound that came out sounded like gagging at first. Then Silver realised: it was the sound of a body tumbling down stairs. Flint jumped back at the noise.

“Who did this to you?” Silver asked suddenly.

Something rang out deep in the bowels of the house, not an instrument, more of a chime, long and distorted.

“The fuck does that mean?” Flint asked.

“No bloody clue, mate.”

The older woman's face distorted with frustration. She moved away from Flint, striding purposefully towards Silver. He wanted to run, but his feet were rooted to the spot. He could see the hole in her skull, the blood on her face, her teeth bared in fury, and then–

“James!” Silver's voice was between a scream and a wail. It didn't sound right. It didn't sound like his voice. “James he's holding us here!”

“What?” Flint turned towards Silver. In Silver's eyes, Flint suddenly didn't look the same. His hair was longer, his clothes from another age, his beard thicker. Silver's hands rose before him of their own accord, dropping his camera, reaching for Flint. His heart was filled with a yearning, a sadness that felt both familiar and completely foreign.

“Please, James, help us,” Silver cried.

Flint stared back at him, uncomprehending. “Who are you?”

A sob rose in Silver's chest, even as a word formed on his lips. His feet moved forward, his hands still reaching out for Flint. With a visible shudder, Flint held his hand out. Their palms touched and–

The coffee table hurled itself across the room, steel feet screeching on the floor with an infernal sound. Flint tried to pull Silver away, but the glass tabletop smashed into Silver's leg. He heard himself shriek, then blackness closed in on him.

When Silver came to he was freezing cold. Nausea gripped his stomach and throat and the worst pain he'd ever felt pulsed through his bad leg.

“Help!” he called out in a panic.

“I'm here.” Flint was crouching just beside Silver. They were in the kitchen again. Silver didn't remember getting there. “I think your leg's injured, maybe dislocated at the knee.”

“No shit,” Silver ground out. He had to swallow down a cry when he tried to move.

“Wait here. I'm coming back.” Flint ran out of the kitchen before Silver could grab him.

Silver lay there shaking, trying to breathe through the pain. He could barely believe that crazy motherfucker, who'd been so terrified of paranormal activity until five minutes ago, had run out into the worst part of the house on his own.

There was the sound of china smashing, and the thundering of Flint's footsteps. He skidded back into the kitchen and slammed the door behind him.

“Bastards were throwing vases around,” he explained, gasping for breath. “Really don't like me.”

“Miranda loves you.” Silver blinked at the words that had come out of his mouth.

Flint looked at him, mouth falling open. “Miranda?”

“The woman with a gunshot wound. She… you got that she was using me as a conduit, right?”

“Yeah.” Flint shivered.

“When our hands touched, I… I dunno what I saw. It was you, and it was her, all at once. And I think she told me something. There's a word on the tip of my tongue, but I can't remember what it is.”

“I think she knew a man who looked just like you, back in the day.”

Flint frowned at him, setting his mouth into a firm line. “C'mon, let's get your leg splinted.” He held a broken chair leg. “I figured if the spirits are breaking them, I'm bloody well going to take advantage.” He rifled through his boxes and brought out a first aid kit.

“I didn't think you were that kind of doctor,” Silver said weakly, trying to think of anything else but Flint shifting his leg around to splint it.

“I'm not, I'm just prepared for anything.”

Flint's touch on Silver's leg was very gentle, but it didn't hurt any less when he started bandaging it into place. Silver ground his teeth, sucking in shaky breaths, eyes closed. When his eyelids fluttered open for a second, he glimpsed a group of unkempt men standing all around him, worried, watching him get treated. He screwed his eyes shut again, a shudder coursing through his belly.

“Done,” Flint said. He'd encased Silver's knee between two chair legs and secured it all with bandages. It was fuck ugly and clunky as anything but maybe Silver would manage to stand up without screaming.

“Right.” Silver took a deep breath. “Now to get the fuck out of here.”

“About that.” Flint frowned. “I tried to get us out after you got injured, but the front door wouldn't budge.”

Silver threw his head back. “Jesus Christ! Fuck!”

“Yeah.” Flint laid his hand on Silver's shoulder, gave it a brief squeeze. “And cell reception is patchy. I can't get enough of a signal to call Eleanor and have her come get us.”

“So what the fuck are we meant to do? Wait until the fucker tries to kill us?”

“We could try a window, I suppose.”

The chime started up again. It was louder in the kitchen than it had been in the living room. The sound was heavy, ominous. It set Silver's teeth on edge.

“It sounds like an old clock striking the hour,” Flint murmured.

“There's something about it,” Silver said. “Something Miranda wanted us to know.”

“Peter Ashe.”

The word dropped quietly out of Flint's mouth, like a drop of water setting off a tsunami. The cupboards, the floor, everything around them started shaking. Silver grabbed Flint, holding him tight as the lights flickered. Over the groaning of floorboards and panelling, Silver could hear a furious roar and the clock chiming over and over, desperately.

Knives jangled in the drawers. Silver and Flint stared at each other, the same horror etched on their faces.

“Quick!” Flint grabbed Silver, drawing him up. The pain was excruciating when Silver's injured leg dragged on the floor, but it receded once he was upright, clinging onto Flint for balance. They hobbled together to the kitchen door. Flint grabbed the handle, turned it, rattled it.

“It's stuck!” he shouted. Silver wrapped his arm tighter around Flint's waist at the noise of a drawer sliding open.

“Pull harder!” Silver leaned forward, pressing his hand over Flint's, pulling at the doorknob with all his strength.

The door slammed open and they both nearly toppled over. In the corridor stood the diffuse, eyeless glowing entity that had been hovering around Flint upstairs. It seemed to be surrounded with black smoke, the smell of gunpowder and blood. Its face slowly took shape – a man dressed in rich clothes, sour face twisted with anger, blood spilling down his front. Peter Ashe, Silver supposed. A growl, low and rumbling, came from the man and he started striding towards them.

“Jesus!” Flint yelped.

Silver felt a cold hand pulling at his sleeve. When he turned to look, he found himself staring into the young girl's dead eyes. She tugged at him again, then pointed at a door inside the kitchen.

“Here!” Silver shouted, pulling Flint away from the figure that advanced on them, dark smoke swirling around it, tendrils reaching for them like skeletal hands.

“What?!” Flint tried to move in the direction Silver was going. If the girl was leading them into a trap, they were fucking done for. Silver wrenched the door open and a dark staircase gaped at them, leading into a cellar. From within that space, the clock chimed again, much clearer now.

“I can't get down there,” Silver breathed. “You go!” The furious figure of Peter Ashe was behind them, howling, dark smoke covering the kitchen floor.

“The fuck I will,” Flint growled, tugging Silver along with him, slamming the door after himself. They were left in pitch black. Silver shuddered as several thuds resounded on the door, as if it were being pelted with cutlery. He was sure he heard the tip of a knife break through the wood.

Flint scrabbled around and a light came on at the bottom of the stairway. They managed, barely, to limp their way down the creaking wooden stairs. Silver's stomach lurched when they skidded down three steps at a time. He grabbed the banister and they abruptly stopped sliding. Flint's forehead knocked his, then he pressed himself up into Silver. For balance. Surely for balance. And Silver shouldn't even have been thinking this, goddamn it.

“I used to have this dream,” Flint said, his lips so close to Silver's than he could feel Flint's breath on his skin. “About a woman– I swear she looked just like this ghost, Miranda. Is that even possible?”

“I– well some people believe in past lives.” The noises in the kitchen had subsided and Flint was so warm against him that Silver could barely think of anything else. “Especially if there's some sort of unfinished business.”

“Do you believe in them?” Flint's eyes bored into Silver, sending a pang deep into his chest. This was too much. He wanted to squirm away and to pull Flint even closer, all at once.

“I…” Silver chuckled. “Someone once told me I was a sailor in a past life, and that my mysterious leg pain was due to losing my leg.” He shivered as he recalled the vision of men standing around him with looks of horror and pity on their faces.

“People will spout such bullshit,” Flint grumbled. Slowly, carefully, he brought Silver down the last couple of steps into the cellar. There were piles of boxes, old toys, bicycles, tools, furniture covered with sheets.

And there wasn't any way out. The two windows, high up near the ceiling, were much too small for them to get out of – even if Silver had been able to climb.

“Why the fuck did you bring us here?” Silver asked, feeling anger rise in him at the prospect of getting crushed by a fuckton of old junk if the angry spirit in the house decided to start hurling things at them again. “Is this a fucking trap?”

The chime rang in the depths of the cellar; Silver startled and pressed himself closer to Flint. A tall and narrow clock stood at the very back of the cellar. Its pale face peeked through what must have been centuries' worth of dust, numbers and hands barely visible.

“Thank you… Abigail,” Flint said. He shivered against Silver. “Why do I know her name?”

“The man was shouting it in the entrance hall earlier.” Not that Silver had caught what he'd been saying. Not that Flint had even admitted to hearing that voice when Silver had asked. “And why are you thanking her?”

Flint shook his head. “I'm not sure. The clock is… important, somehow. Part of their story.”

“Hey, who's the medium here?” Silver asked, a little peeved.

“It has something to do with the man. Her… her father, I think.”

“This Peter Ashe, huh. Do you think he killed his wife?” Silver asked. “He was telling the daughter she couldn't leave, maybe he wanted to hush it up… but then she tried to escape and fell down the stairs?”

“Miranda's not his wife,” Flint said with infuriating decisiveness. “But yes, I think he killed her and wanted to keep it quiet. Every time she's about to talk, he attacks.”

“Which is why we couldn't understand them until Miranda got inside me.” Silver wrinkled his nose. “That sounded dirtier than I meant it to be.”

Flint smiled at him, warm, soft. Familiar. He'd always seemed familiar. In fact, they'd always bickered like an old couple, ever since their first meeting a few years ago.

“Things seem quiet now,” Flint said. “How come?”

“It takes a lot out of a spirit to manifest, especially throwing around furniture like that. He's recuperating. I doubt we have long, though, especially if we've discovered what that man was trying to hide.”

“Why is the clock important, then?” Flint dragged them to the mess piled up in front of the clock, and helped Silver lower himself down onto a sturdy-looking box.

“Sometimes, a spirit fixes itself to a specific object, rather than a place. People say it makes them more powerful, since they're sort of… concentrated in that object.”

Flint raised his eyebrows at Silver doubtfully, but then looked back at the clock with a grunt. “Well, we don't have much to lose.” He started shifting boxes, piling them up precariously to make a crude path through the mess. There was a heavy wooden table in front of the clock. Silver watched Flint growl and curse as he tried to dislodge it and finally drag it away. Flint stood panting beside Silver, then cast him a glance and smiled. Silver smiled back, warmth pooling into his chest.

There was a rattling at the door above them. Silver nearly fell off his perch on the box. “He's back,” he shouted at Flint.

“Not for fucking long.” Flint growled. He hurried around the cellar, upturning boxes, scrabbling inside them. The door at the top of the stairs burst open. Silver could see the bluish silhouette of Peter Ashe standing there, and the dark misty tendrils following him.

“Will this do?” Flint asked Silver, showing him a small axe.

“Dunno! You're supposed to exorcise the object and burn it!”

Flint scoffed. “D'you know any exorcisms then?”

“No! That's far from being my job.”

“Then this'll have to do!” Flint made to go to the clock, but Silver gripped his wrist. “What?”

Silver dragged Flint down to him, or dragged himself up to him, he wasn't even sure. Pain bloomed up his leg and he didn't give a shit. They kissed – hot, passionate, desperate. Silver felt Flint's fingers in his hair, squeezed him tight against him. When Flint pulled away, he looked dazed, and more determined than ever.

“Hold him off if you can,” he breathed, and hurried towards the clock. It began chiming, loud, desperate. The axe thudded into its door. For a split second, Silver thought he could see fire on its blade.

You shouldn't have come here!

Ghostly hands wrapped around Silver's throat, rotten, repulsive. He gurgled, choked for breath, flailed around him. In the background, wood splintered, and hope sparked in Silver's chest. The grip loosened, just enough for Silver to draw in a breath.

Suddenly, Miranda was right behind him. Silver could feel her icy breath on the back of his neck, could glimpse her snarling mouth. The ghostly hands loosened, Peter Ashe's face distorted with a disdainful sneer. He let go, moving towards Flint instead. Metallic sounds came from the clock; Flint was taking the mechanism apart. Silver wanted to warn him, but he was still freezing, gasping for breath.

“Behind you!” Silver finally managed to shout – too late. Peter Ashe was blocking the path Flint had carved for himself amongst the mess.

Flint turned around from the ravaged clock, which stood eviscerated from its brass insides, its face torn to pieces. It was nothing more than a dark wooden box now. Flint's face grew furious, wild, when he saw the amorphous shape moving towards him. He raised his axe.

“Come on then, Governor!” Flint screamed. “I'll kill you as many times as I have to!”

Peter Ashe growled, and Flint flew back into the clock. The wood gave way under the blast, skewing sideways, tearing the clock's frame apart. Flint crumpled to the floor under the debris. Ashe turned to Silver and gave a horrible, sick smirk. Silver could barely breathe. If breaking the clock wasn't the solution, they were fucked. They were going to die down here.

And then a thought, a spark of inspiration flickered through his mind.

“Miranda, Abigail!” Silver cried, the words spilling out of his mouth. “I know this man harmed you, I know he stifled you and kept you here, but you're stronger than you think! Stop fearing him! Unleash your anger!”

Miranda suddenly appeared between Flint and Peter Ashe. Abigail stepped out from seemingly nowhere to stand beside her. They looked at each other, as if seeing each other for the first time. Miranda smiled, reached her hand to Abigail. When their fingers linked, Peter shifted back, mouth falling open in horror.

“Leave this place!” Silver screamed. “We cast you out, Peter Ashe! It's time for you to cross over and go where you belong!”

Miranda and Abigail's mouths moved with his words, silently intoning them.

“Leave! Get out of here!” Silver shouted again, and the women advanced on Peter Ashe, furious, glowing bright against the tendrils of darkness that trailed around the cellar.

GET OUT!

The house shook under the force of the scream. It tore through the house, desperate, furious, two shrill voices made one. Silver clapped his hands over his ears, vision blackening. It seemed to go on for hours, for centuries, making the whole building shake. Boxes tumbled over, a bicycle clattered to the ground.

Silence fell.

Amidst the shards of wood and cardboard boxes, Flint gasped and dragged himself upright. There was a scrape across his cheek, and he wavered as he walked, but he managed to get out of the maze of debris and sag onto a crate. His hand found Silver's, squeezed it softly.

“Did you just save my life, Mr Silver?” he asked hoarsely. “Feels like it's not the first time.”

“Look,” Silver told him. Miranda was standing above them, smiling. The hole in her head was gone, her modest dress had turned into a regal satin gown. A bright halo surrounded her. Her hand reached for Flint's cheek, touched it ever so delicately.

Thank you, my love.

“Don't go,” Flint breathed.

She smiled wider, shimmered, then slowly faded. Flint's eyes grew wide as she disappeared into the gloom, sadness etched across his face. Silver squeezed Flint's hand tighter and pretended not to see the tears rolling down his cheeks.

“Let's get the fuck out of here,” Flint said with a sniffle. “C'mon.”

Dawn was breaking when Flint finally managed to drag Silver out of the house. Silver looked back into the entrance hall. The floor was littered with debris of broken furniture, decorations and picture frames – Eleanor was going to kill them – but everything was quiet, serene.

“Well. That was something,” Flint said lamely.

“And I didn't even get to film the ending.”

“Are you shitting me?” Flint snapped, turning on Silver. “We nearly died in there and all you can think about is your fucking Youtube fame?!”

“Well that video had better go viral if I ever want to cover the fucking American medical costs for this,” Silver said with a smirk, nodding towards his leg.

Flint snorted, and gave Silver a squeeze. “Fine. We'll get our stuff back from the house after you get this seen to. Ready?”

“Haul away, Captain.” Flint raised his eyebrows at him. “I dunno, it sounded right. D'you like Doc better?”

“What kind of a mess have I got myself into with you?” Flint grumbled, helping Silver down the porch stairs.

Silver glanced back at the house one last time. He thought, perhaps, that he'd glimpsed Abigail in the stairway. She was smiling.

He wrapped his arm tighter around Flint's waist, and followed where Flint led.