Page 47 of Monstrous Travels as Wicked as Sin

“Mmm,” Percy grunted, making his way out of the wall. “Just kids…”

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

WHO THE FUCK THOUGHT A SÉANCE IN A HAUNTED HOUSE WOULD BE A GOOD IDEA?

Joe was successful in his search for candles. So many candles in such bright abundance that one might think he was enjoying the affair. Joe was an experienced ghost-chatterer, though. And Percy imagined ghosts probably made a nice change from the usual demon possessions that priests were wont to deal with.

Thankfully, there was no sign of a demon in the house. The occasional religious artefact sat upright and undisturbed. The dust, as Percy had pointed out, kept no prints. Movements in the house cast no shadows, and more damning still, as bad as the whole place stank, there wasn’t a hint of sulphur. Every interference with their exploration since arrival had been perfectly poltergeist-like.

Filling himself up with every such fact and reassurance he could conjure, Percy ripped his knife out of the floorboards, having carved the well-known characters, digits and words of a ouija board straight into the wood. For this, he received a loud tsk, and was forced to reiterate to his betrothed that the house would be ashes before long.

Sad as that was.

It was a piece of history, after all. A gorgeous one. But a cruel and relentlessly murderous one. Even the art historian in him was resolved: houses that repeatedly kill have to go, aesthetics be damned. And if the John Constable painting went up with it? It was simply the price they had to pay.

Of course, a few choice and non-cloying antique items had been quietly wrapped in a nearby throw for easy removal, should a quick dash from the premises be required.

While these and more preparations were being seen to by Percy, Joe had, in addition to the candles, found several glasses in the kitchen and lined them up in a row on the floor. When he dropped down next to Percy, their knees touching, a frisson of barely repressible excitement bubbled behind Joe’s pathetically hidden smile, and they both felt the nostalgic thrill of that first stupid teenage séance.

More or less.

Percy, by the time he was sweet on that one particular girl who didn’t have the faintest idea about how to truly pull a séance off, was too-thoroughly versed in supernatural evil to be very concerned when she suggested the idea at a slumber party. He logically knew the thing wouldn’t work, and it didn’t, but until it was over, there was that background, ‘what if?’ A touch of fear that Mandy might murder them all that night, just like his older brother had murdered his nanny that one time. It was a different trepidation to the kind the other participants felt, but there was that similar something simmering away. Fear, but only a controlled touch of it, which quickly dissipated.

Mandy had used Scrabble letters for the board, and it quickly became apparent she and her friend had planned and rigged the game with no other purpose than to have the ‘spirit’ find out if Percy liked her too.

Joe’s first séance experience was nothing alike, yet totally alike. The village graveyard had always been rumoured to behaunted, and happy to be anywhere but at home, Joe had snuck out of his bedroom window after dark, as he often did, to smoke cigarettes with other kids who also hated to be at home. They were an ill-matched group drawn together mostly out of loneliness and agreement about what they didn’t like rather than any shared interests, but it was company and relative peace.

Out of sheer boredom, they had gone to the graveyard, set up a makeshift board in the caretaker’s shed, and the séanceworked. It worked like magic, which it really was, to Joe and to the rest of them.

First contact with the other side.

The first real proof of life after death.

Joe returned again and again, sometimes alone, sometimes with the others. Good things came through, bad things came through, but things came through, and from that very first séance, Joe’s life was changed and set, irrevocably, on the path that found him in Scotland that afternoon, next to the love of his life, about to do something that had always, to him, been a positive experience, even when it wasn’t.

Percy and Joe, both of them, were physically warded against demon possession. Ghosts don’t possess people—not without their permission anyway—so they weren’t worried about that. Thus, both were lulled into a sadly misplaced sense of confidence.

Joe’s index finger touched the glass. Percy’s index finger touched the glass.

“Are there any spirits with us today?” Joe commenced. He received a lightly contemptuous glower from Percy for the effort. “What?”

“We know there are spirits here. They’ve been throwing things at us since we arrived.”

“Yes, but?—”

“They’re going to think you don’t know how to do a séance and you’ll lose all credibility.”

“Oh, sorry, I didn’t realise the desperate murdered undead were quite so judgemental.”

“They’ve probably had a lot of time to think this sort of thing over.”

The glass had, by this time, meandered unnoticed to YES.

Joe let out a sigh so heavy it disturbed the surrounding dust. “Are there any spirits with us todaywho would like to communicate with usvia this incredibly professionally made spirit board my smug associate has so skilfully erected?”

With a shove of his shoulder into Joe’s, “There’s no need to be snarky about it.”

Joe fixed Percy with a cool eye, which Percy met with an amused challenge, and neither noticed the movement of the glass away from and back to YES. “You want to talk about snarky?”

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