The Ghost House. Helen Phifer

chairs waiting for something that might mean it was their turn. His mother was just as bad. She held weekly séances for a couple of her friends and he was sure she made it up as she went along, but it gave him a couple of hours respite from her continual sniping at him.

      It had been a month ago now that he had gone for a walk into town and spied the old tin box in the window of the junk shop. Melvyn, the owner, liked to call it an antique shop but more often than not it sold nothing but junk at extortionate prices. He had felt drawn to the box and before he knew it he’d gone into the shop and began to wander around. He hadn’t pointed out that he was interested in the box because then the price would go up by at least twenty quid so he’d browsed for ten minutes and made to go out of the door when he stopped and looked at the box. He leant into the window and carefully extracted it from the rest of the rubbish that was in there. Melvyn had gone to put the kettle on so it gave him a chance to take a quick peek.

      It was once ornately painted with a golden pattern around it, now there was more rust than gold and it looked in such a poor state but he felt his heart beat a little faster when he held it. Melvyn was talking very loudly on the phone to someone so he opened the box to look inside: there were some very old, grainy black and white photographs and a couple of letters. He tucked it under his arm and walked to the back of the shop. Melvyn was deep in conversation, the phone tucked under his ear as he stirred the tea bag around his chipped Charles and Diana royal wedding mug.

      ‘How much do you want for this, Melvyn?’ He was trying his best to look not in the least bothered so as not to arouse his suspicions.

      ‘Fiver. It’s an antique you know, Victorian.’

      ‘A fiver? I only want it to keep some air rifle pellets in. I’ll give you four quid.’

      Whoever was on the phone took Melvyn’s attention away and he nodded OK to him. He counted out four pound coins and put them on the counter. Melvyn nodded again then pocketed the money and turned back to pour the milk into his tea. He walked out of the shop with the box tucked under his arms and a big grin on his face: today was a good day for him. It wasn’t often he got one over on old Melvyn. He went home and put the tin away in his wardrobe; safe until he had time to look at it properly.

      He had been sitting here politely listening to his mother carping on about Edith’s dead husband and thinking how fed up of his life he was. He was sick of being on his own and sick of his mother who was getting more irritating by the day. Then, out of nowhere, came the burning desire to kill someone. Inside, where he used to know nothing but calm, was now a violent torrent of bubbling horror. He didn’t want to just smack someone over the head with a hammer or maybe run them over. He wanted to take a woman into the old mansion in the woods and slit her throat from ear to ear. He wanted to watch the rich crimson tide of warm, sticky blood flow across the pale, milky skin of his victim. She must have the whitest skin so the blood would contrast vividly against it and then he would slice and dice until the monster inside him was satiated and he felt like himself again.

      ‘Are you listening to me? Edith wants a glass of water and judging by the look on your face you could do with one as well. What is the matter with you? Daydreaming like a fifteen-year-old boy! It doesn’t matter, I’ll get it myself’

      He blinked and looked around at the bunch of wrinkly old women staring at him.

      ‘Sorry, Mother.’

      She shook her head in disgust, and a vision of him slicing her throat into a permanent gaping smile made him jump up from the hard, dining chair he was sitting on and knock the small card table she used for the séance onto the laps of the two women.

      ‘Sorry, ladies.’

      He left the room, brushing past his mother as she returned carrying a large glass of water. He bounded up the stairs and into his bedroom slamming his door shut; he then dragged the chair over and pushed it under the handle so the old bat couldn’t walk in on him. Turning on his computer he waited for Google to load. He was a natural at internet grooming – it was so easy to be the perfect person to whoever you were talking to, and he’d surprised himself by the ease with which he had taken to it. He had always been a planner since he was at school but he was also afraid of the black rage which had started to take over and knew that if the situation arose he may not be able to control it and it worried him. He logged into the dating site he had joined a month ago under a false name and typed ‘single women in Cumbria’ hitting the enter button hard. His tongue snaked from his mouth and he licked his top lip, as the pages began to load. He began to search for his next suitable victim to keep Jenna company in the cellar – he didn’t want her to be lonely down there. He paused on a picture of a girl with the palest complexion. A green circle below it showed that she was online and could be messaged.

      He typed: ‘Would you like to visit a haunted house?’

      Within seconds a reply flashed up on the screen: ‘Yes, I would. Do you know of one?’

      Oh yes I do, who would have thought it could be so easy.

      Will returned to the station. He needed to speak to the DI and organise a search. One of the address checks had come up with a confirmed last sighting of Jenna White. The girl who lived there sometimes gave Jenna a lift into college and had driven past her last night at approximately twenty past eight as she turned into the approach road to Abbey Wood. She hadn’t been seen since.

      He pushed the numerical code on the keypad to open the door, hoping it was still the right one; they had a habit of changing it just as he would get used to it. He stopped off at the community office to speak to the sergeant and asked him for as many officers and police community support officers that he could spare so they could start searching the Abbey and doing the house to house enquiries at the few houses that were down there. It was a massive area and he was going to have to call in a few favours to get as many people as possible to help out. She could be lying injured somewhere. He hoped that she hadn’t strayed onto the railway tracks that ran behind the Abbey and been hit by a train. There had been a few locals who had met their untimely death due to a high speed Edinburgh-bound train passing through.

      His head began to pound the same rhythm as his heart and he swallowed a couple of paracetamol before going up to the large room on the first floor, which was used to hold meetings and large scale briefings. This shift was going to be a long one, he just hoped by the end of it Jenna White was reunited with her family one way or another.

      The thunder was easing off with just an occasional rumble in the distance. Annie sat at the kitchen table with a mug of coffee in one hand and the other resting on the book. It had to be the book she had found inside the desk, but there was no way to explain how it got from the imaginary desk onto the floor. To say it was strange was a bit of an understatement. Pulling a tea towel off the back of a chair she rubbed at the thick layer of dust on the front cover. The book was bound in black leather which had softened and cracked with age, she expected the title to say Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland but instead it read Diary. She exhaled, unaware she had been holding her breath. Her hands trembling, she opened it and the read the inscription on the inside front cover: This is the private diary of Alice Hughes. A chill spread down the back of her neck: the man in the house had been shouting for Alice. The script was beautiful, elegant and Annie wished that she could write like that. For a moment she felt a twinge of guilt that she was about to read someone’s diary. How would she feel if it were the other way around? But it was obviously very old and she doubted very much that whomever it belonged to was still alive.

       25^th December 1886

      My name is Alice Hughes, I am fifteen years old and work as a housemaid for Lord and Lady Heaton of Manor House, Abbey Wood, Barrow-in-Furness. I am very fortunate as I was given this journal as a gift from Lady Hannah who told me that, ‘To write is a precious gift that should be used if one has been fortunate enough to be blessed with it.’ It is thanks to Lady Hannah that I can write. She always gave me time away from my chores to sit in the schoolroom with Master Edward and learn whenever his tutor came to give him lessons. I did not like having to spend so much time in Edward’s