The damp-stained and iron-studded oak door opened on creaking hinges, a distant light showing from deep within the darkened house. A woman of about forty, who may have been attractive if she had made less effort to be attractive, stood watching them, as if visitors to this house were unexpected and unwelcome. Danny opened his door and got out, stretching his legs after the drive from London. He heard other car doors opening as the rest of the team discovered their courage and followed.

 

‘Marjorie?’ Danny asked as he walked towards the door, trying to look as cheerful as possible in this cheerless place.

 

The woman wearing jeans that were at least two sizes too small, and a tight top that revealed what would be better to remain hidden, rolled her eyes and shouted into the house with a voice like an angry cat. ‘Duncan. Visitors fer your muvva.’ Her accent and demeanour would have suited one of the less loveable characters in Eastenders.

 

A small dog of uncertain breeding rushed out of the house and immediately clamped itself onto Danny’s leg.

 

‘Stop that Musket,’ the overly made up and underly dressed woman said. ‘Get dahn, or you get no treats.’ Her words had no effect, and the dog stayed clamped to Danny’s leg. ‘Just push him away, dirty little beggar.’

 

Danny had grown up in Newcastle, where dogs were large, usually on chains, and called Bastad. He had never had to deal with a small dog that had a foot fetish before, and he had no idea what the socially acceptable procedure should be. He tried shaking his leg, but Musket just held on more tightly as he went about his business.

 

‘Don’t lerrim do that, gerrimoffya,’ the intimidating blonde woman said sternly, as if somehow it was all Danny’s fault.

 

‘I’m sorry, I just don’t want to hurt him,’ Danny lied as he leaned down to prise the mutt from his ankle and shoo it away. Musket thought about returning to his delights, but one look at Danny’s face convinced the dog to scarper back into the house.

 

‘Ah, shite.’ Danny heard from behind him as Mike tried to wind a fresh spool of tape into his ancient recorder.

 

A timid and tired looking middle-aged man, harmless in his own way, or possibly a mass murderer, appeared next to the door. If he was this woman’s husband, Danny already felt sorry for him, mass murderer or not. He was dressed in an ill-fitting light brown jumper over a green checked shirt, with dark blue moleskin trousers, finished off with brightly polished brown shoes. As a fashion statement, it said ‘sad’.

 

‘Can I help you?’ the downtrodden man asked.

 

Danny wasn’t used to this. Usually, the door would be opened by somebody very keen to see him and the team, who he had been exchanging emails with for a while. This broken looking man was clearly not Marjorie, or maybe he was.

 

‘You’ll have to wait a minute,’ Mike said as he still struggled with his recorder.

 

Danny wasn’t bothered about recording this part. It was unlikely to be a highlight of their visit. ‘My name’s Danny Robins, from Uncanny.’

 

The defeated man looked blank. His wife, if that was his wife, still looked hostile. The dog appeared between them, wondering if it was safe to have another go at Danny’s ankle.

 

‘I’ve been emailing Marjorie, about visiting the house.’ Still no reaction, and the only one that looked pleased to see him there was the dog. ‘We’re from the BBC, making a podcast about paranormal events and places. We were told you have some sort of poltergeist.’ Danny was beginning to think they were either at the wrong house, or were victims of some sort of prank, when there was a commotion within the house and an old woman of at least seventy appeared at the door.

 

‘Danny!’ she exclaimed with a flash of gleaming plastic teeth. ‘You found us alright then.’ Her accent was Irish, with the sharp tang that suggested north, possibly Belfast.

 

‘Right, you can start now,’ Mike said loudly, still fiddling with his tape recorder.

 

‘Why on earth are you dressed like that mother?’ the man asked. The old woman gave him a look that could wither steel. Danny then noticed that she was wearing almost identical jeans to the much younger woman next to her, and some sort of low cut top that showed off far too much tanned leather. She smiled, showing that some of her bright red glossy lipstick had already smeared across her dentures. The younger woman next to her was definitely not smiling, and from her visible fury, Danny could guess where those clothes had come from.

 

‘You must be Marjorie,’ Danny said, trying to regain some sort of composure.

 

‘I am, yes,’ she said, unable to take her adoring eyes off Danny. ‘This is my son, Duncan.’ Her smile slipped, as if so much disappointment was contained in those few words. ‘And this is his wife, Cheryl.’

 

So he was married to her then. Poor Duncan. No wonder he looked like that. ‘Pleased to meet you all,’ Danny said, more out of habit than conviction. ‘This is Evelyn Hollow, a writer and paranormal psychologist, and this is Dr Ciarán O’Keeffe, a parapsychologist.’

 

‘Aw shite, you’ll have to run through that again.’

 

‘And this is Mike, our sound engineer.’ Danny indicated the dishevelled creature that was struggling with loops of recording tape while cursing to himself.

 

‘Do come into my house,’ Marjorie said, leaving no doubt as to who wore the trousers, or at least who was paying for the trousers in this house.

 

Danny politely indicated that Evelyn should go first, but she gave him a look that he must be bloody kidding. Ciarán looked no more keen than Evelyn to enter into the domain of Marjorie, who was still grinning at Danny like a love-lost teenager. He was wondering if they could still make a run for the car, but then remembered that his car was a Prius, and by the time he got it turned around it was probably quicker to walk back to London. Also, Marjorie may be old, but she looked in pretty good shape, and could possibly outrun all of them in her Nike trainers, and she didn’t look like somebody to mess with. He wasn’t really ready to take that chance on her home turf.

 

Against his better judgement, he led the team into the house, through a dark and musty outer vestibule, into a vast cavern of a central hallway. Lights threw small patches of illumination onto the deeply stained oak panelling, like starlight lost in the vast blackness of space. The enormous interior seemed to soak up any light that dared to enter within. Double staircases rose to the dimly lit first floor, and although he couldn’t see in the poor light, Danny knew they must be home to cobwebs and thick dust.

 

‘I’m sorry if my emails were a bit messed up,’ Marjorie apologised as they kept walking and walking, seemingly getting no closer to the other side. ‘I’m all fingers and thumbs typing on one of these things.’ She held up the very latest top of the range iPhone.

 

‘Oh, they were fine,’ Danny said as he stopped about halfway across the tiled floor for a rest. ‘This is certainly an impressive house,’ he said, not intending it as a compliment.

 

‘My husband always wanted a grand house like this,’ Marjorie said, also looking around as if she had never seen the place before.

 

‘Oh, so it was his decision to move here.’

 

‘No, but I brought him along anyway.’ Danny followed her gaze to an urn that sat on the mantlepiece above one of the two fireplaces. ‘It seemed the least I could do, seeing that he paid for it. Or rather, his father did. He never earned a penny in his life, only spent it. Total waster he was.’

 

‘Oh, I see.’ Danny thought he had better try to steer the conversation to why they were here. ‘And do you think he might be connected to what has been going on here?’

 

‘Hah!’ The sound exploded from the old woman with a force that would split logs. ‘That lazy eejit wouldn’t shift off his arse when he was alive. He’s certainly not going to do it now.’ Just as Danny was wondering if they should still try to make a run for it, Marjorie invited them even deeper into the house. ‘Come and help yourselves to a cup of tea or coffee, unless of course, you’d rather have something a little stronger.’ Her eyes brightened as she spoke these last words, as if something a little stronger was definitely more her cup of tea.

 

‘Tea would be lovely thanks,’ Danny said, thinking that getting out of there would actually be lovely, but as if drawn by an unstoppable force, he felt himself leading his team further into the echoing house.

 

‘I wonder if there will be cakes?’ Ciarán muttered aloud as they walked towards a door that offered the faint glimmer of daylight beyond.

 

‘This is Rufus,’ Marjorie said as they entered a kitchen that was easily twice the size of Danny’s house, and possibly taller. A spotty boy of about fifteen didn’t react to their introduction at all, engrossed in some sort of hand-held computer game. ‘And this is Olivia.’ Also sat at a long wooden table that could easily seat thirty people was a girl of similar teen sort of age, lost in her mobile phone. ‘These are the people from…’

 

‘We know who they are,’ the girl replied flatly, not taking her eyes off her phone.

 

Evelyn took out her own phone but noticed she still had no service here. This wasn’t the first time she regretted choosing a phone provider so cheap that nobody had ever heard of them. She put it back in her pocket and gazed up at the high ceiling. ‘Wow. Those beams are so impressive,’ she said, taking in the sheer scale of the room. ‘I love the way they just rest on those stones that are built out of the wall.’

 

‘Corbels,’ Duncan said.

 

Evelyn stared at him, thinking how rude this man was. She had been complimenting his house for pity’s sake.

 

‘Shall I put the kettle on?’ Marjorie suggested, still not able to believe that she had lured Danny into her kitchen. She had dreamed of this moment since sending that first email.

 

‘Tea, white no sugar please,’ Evelyn said, still bristling about Duncan’s rudeness.

 

‘Same for me please, and for Ciarán,’ Danny said, seeing that Ciarán had taken up a position in front of one of the six floor to ceiling windows, and was unlikely to do anything now except sigh occasionally. Danny had forgotten that he had only bribed him here with cakes.

 

‘Ah shite with the bloody thing.’

 

‘And white with four sugars for Mike please,’ Danny said, as Mike tried to prise the dog away from his microphone which he had rested on the floor.

 

‘Gerroff it Musket,’ Cheryl said, ‘You dirty little aaand.’ She pushed her way past Mike to hoof the mongrel away. ‘Bad dog. No treat.’ Mike picked up the microphone and put it on the table.

 

‘Is he your sound guy?’ the girl asked without looking away from her phone.

 

‘Yes, sorry,’ Danny said. ‘This is Mike, he…’

 

‘I know what he does,’ the girl said, still staring at her phone. ‘Could you ask him to take that thing away please? It’s got diseases on it.’

 

Mike slumped down in a chair and dragged the fur covered microphone along the table away from where the two teenagers were staring at pixels, knocking over a pot of something in the process. He leaned back, as if ten minutes on his feet had proved to be an endurance too far, displaying food stains on his cardigan from when they had stopped earlier, or maybe from yesterday, or last week. A small flake of something blew from one of his nostrils as his breath whistled in and out through the gap in his teeth.

 

‘Is he still recording this?’ Evelyn asked, noticing that the microphone now sat in a spilt pool of something on the table.

 

‘I’ve no idea,’ Danny admitted. ‘You never can tell, really.’

 

Twenty minutes passed in slow agony while the kettle boiled and the rituals of making and drinking tea were observed. Duncan explained in a dull monotone about the problems of the house, the work that needed doing, and how difficult it was to get tradesmen to turn up because of the local stories about the house being haunted. He became slightly less uninteresting when he turned to the history of the house, how it had once been an Augustinian priory, but that was dissolved in 1538 under the reforms of Henry VIII. ‘Most of the buildings were demolished, and it was sold to Sir John Thomas.’

 

‘Seriously?’ Danny asked. ‘There was somebody called John Thomas?’

 

‘Yes,’ Duncan said, obviously having no idea why anybody would question such a thing.

 

Danny slurped down his tea, still scalding hot, but even severe burns would be better than listening to Duncan drone on any longer. ‘Would it be okay for us to have a look around?’ he asked, hardly able to speak because of the pain.

 

‘Yes, but watch out for missing floorboards,’ Duncan said. ‘I think I’ve lifted all the really bad ones, but you never can be sure until you put your weight on them.’

 

‘Oh, is that dry rot?’ Danny asked as he pushed his chair back under the table.

 

‘Dry rot, wet rot, hah!’ Cheryl said, rolling her eyes dramatically. ‘We’ve got the bleeding lot in this place, and woodworm. Take your pick.’

 

‘Thanks for the tea,’ Evelyn said as she too got ready to abandon the kitchen.

 

The boy made a strange grunting noise, which could have been an attempt at speech, but everybody else ignored it, so Danny did too. He saw that Ciarán was still holding his mug, wistfully staring into space, possibly still sulking about the lack of cakes. He would follow when he was ready. He always did. Danny made his way across the kitchen, pleased to get away from Duncan’s droning voice, only to hear the dull monotone following. Great, Duncan was to be their guide. Even greater, Marjorie dashed ahead to lead them on their exploration of this enormous pile of masonry.

 

‘I think we should start upstairs,’ she said, with a sparkle in her eye, ‘ in the bedrooms.’ She set a pace for the stairs that any marathon runner would be proud of. Whatever she was slipping into her tea when nobody was looking was definitely doing her no harm. Despite her age, she was easily the fittest out of the lot of them.

 

The stairs creaked and groaned as they made their way up, the visitors trading carefully while listening intently for the splintering noises that would give some warning of total collapse, but Marjorie and Duncan were clearly used to the danger, or were unaware of it, and strode on ahead. Somehow, they made it safely to the floor above. There was more dark wood panelling, Danny thinking that if this place ever caught fire, the sheer scale of the blaze would be visible from London, a hundred miles away. Doors, presumably to bedrooms, or maybe chambers of horrors, opened at regular intervals from the balcony that offered a complete circuit of the hall below. If anybody was in the mood for a long walk, this was the right place. Two dark passages led further back, presumably into wings that extended the house beyond the ridiculous. Perhaps whoever had designed this house had decided that just one postcode wouldn’t be enough, so extended it further towards the next county.

 

‘How many bedrooms are there?’ Danny asked, having lost count of how many doors he could see.

 

‘Seventeen,’ Marjorie replied as she caressed a dull brass doorknob, ‘and this one’s mine.’ She turned the knob is a way that was somehow rudely suggestive, and the door began to open. ‘Would you like to see?’

 

Evelyn, seeing that Danny needed to be rescued from imminent granny danger, tried to create a distraction and opened the next door along. ‘Is this another bed…. Oh sorry. You must use this as a junk room,’ she said, surveying the disorder inside, ‘or did your poltergeist do this?’

 

‘That’s my daughter’s room.’ Duncan explained, his voice conveying regret, as if he had hoped for better things.

 

‘Oh, that’s teenage girls for you,’ Evelyn said, trying to make light of her social gaffe as she closed the door on the chaos that lay within. She tried the next one along, hoping for better luck. She recoiled as the door began to open. ‘Ach, Ciarán, I think we’ve got something here.’ A miasma of corrupting flesh and abominable decay seeped out onto the balcony, causing everybody to step back. ‘That’s none of your phantosmia. That’s a full on olfactory apparition,’ Evelyn said, gasping for air.

 

‘Sorry, I should have warned you.’ Duncan quietly closed the door to prevent any more of the foul odours seeping out. ‘That’s my son’s bedroom. It always smells like that.’ He saw their horrified faces and realised that perhaps he had grown used to it over time and didn’t really notice. ‘If you think that’s bad, you should smell his trainers.’ His attempt at humour may have worked on a different audience that wasn’t feeling physically sick.

 

‘I think you should look into my bedroom first, Danny.’ Marjorie was still standing hopefully with her door open. Mike peered past Danny at the display of satin fabrics and perfumed smells inside, leering as he took in the deep red colourings and soft lighting. A small bead of dribble escaped onto his stubble as he was drawn towards the boudoir.

 

Danny was breaking into a sweat. Somehow, they had to get out of this place. Get the job over with and just go. While Mike was thinking amorous thoughts about Marjorie, Danny ushered Evelyn away from the others and whispered, ‘Do you think there is anything genuine about this place at all, or have we just been lured here by some deranged old bat for nefarious purposes?’ He shot a glance at where Marjorie was held back by Mike’s furry contraption. ‘I haven’t been stalked before, and never imagined it would be by a seventy year old female wrestler who stinks of booze.’

 

‘We need to question them about what they’ve seen, the sightings of this monk-like figure,’ Evelyn said, ‘but my instinct is that there must be something genuinely paranormal here, and not in a pleasant way.’ She looked over to where she had opened the portal to a dark other world. ‘Duncan tried to dismiss that foul miasma as just his teenage son, but nothing human could produce a demonic stench like that.’

 

Danny cast his mind back to his own bedroom when he had been fifteen, and thought that Evelyn was probably wrong, but she had a point. They had to establish some facts instead of being led around this creepy house like visiting tourists. ‘They’ve certainly taken on a doer-upper,’ he said, looking at the decay all around them.

 

‘A knocker-downer more like it,’ Evelyn muttered to herself as she tested the handrail that stopped anybody plunging to the ornate tiled floor far below, not liking the way it moved far too easily. ‘This post is a wee bit wobbly,’ she pointed out.

 

‘Baluster,’ Duncan said.

 

‘No it is, look.’ Once again, she thought Duncan was being outrageously rude as she demonstrated the loose woodwork.

 

Danny looked across to see that Marjorie was about to resort to violence to fend off the interests of Mike. It was time to get things moving. ‘Mike, man, howay,’ he said, slipping back into his native Geordie tongue. Remembering why they were there, and that he was now a southerner, he turned to Duncan. ‘Could you tell us where you first saw this strange hostile figure who comes and goes in your house?’

 

‘Well, I met her when we both worked in London.’ Duncan stopped himself, realising that Danny meant the ghostly monk, not his estranged wife, or rather the wife who he wished was estranged. ‘Oh, you mean Boris,’ he said.

 

‘Boris? Is that what you call your poltergeist?’

 

‘Yes, well, he’s sort of untidy, and nobody can make out anything he says, so we thought Boris would be a good name for him.’

 

‘Well Boris then. Where have you seen him?’

 

‘Everywhere really.’ Duncan looked around the vast expanse of affluent decay that he was supposed to be restoring. ‘He just comes and goes as he pleases. Boris has the run of the whole house.’

 

‘He must be a good runner then,’ Danny muttered as he took in the sheer scale of the place.

 

Ciarán fired into life for the first time since they arrived. ‘The work involved in restoring a place as big as this could cause tiredness over a period of so many months, leading to hallucinations caused by sleep deprivation.’

 

‘It’s alright Ciarán, we haven’t started yet,’ Danny assured him.

 

‘Oh, sorry.’ Ciarán went back to staring at the cracked and warped wood panelling in front of him.

 

Danny couldn’t see any evidence of restoration going on, and somehow couldn’t picture Duncan as the DIY type, never mind being so busy that…Oh bloody hell. All this pointless chatter was just wasting time. He looked at his watch. The afternoon was slipping away and it would be getting dark soon. He wanted to be away while there was still some daylight. ‘Have you seen him yourself?’ he asked Duncan, who had again sunk into a state of bored resignation.

 

‘Oh yes. I bump into him all the time as I walk around. We all do. He’s just become part of the furniture, I suppose.’

 

‘Can you describe him for us?’ Danny asked. ‘Does he look real, or can you see through him? Does he move around or is he fairly static?’

 

‘Well, he looks perfectly real to me.’ Duncan tried to think about how best to describe their resident monastic phantom, but Duncan hadn’t done much thinking for years and was out of practise. ‘You have to move out of his way if he comes towards you or you feel he will knock you over.’

 

‘Oh, that’s interesting,’ Danny said. ‘So he actually walks around the place?’

 

‘Yes, as if he is always looking for something,’ Duncan confirmed.

 

‘You mentioned that you can’t understand him,’ Evelyn said. ‘So you can hear him speaking?’

 

‘Well, it isn’t so much speaking, as grumbling I suppose,’ Duncan said. ‘You can never make out actual words.’

 

‘What about any other senses?’ Ciarán asked. ‘Apart from sight and sound, are there any smells associated with these apparitions for example?’

 

‘Not that I’ve noticed,’ Duncan said, ‘but it’s hard to tell against the normal background aromas in here.’ He cast a look towards his son’s bedroom.

 

‘You see him best at night,’ Marjorie said, scaring the living crap out of Danny, having crept up behind him as silently as a ghost, which was somehow appropriate under the circumstances. ‘Maybe you should stay.’

 

She gave Danny a longing look, while Mike gave Marjorie a longing look. Danny was about to protest that this would be completely impossible, and was still trying to think of a good reason why, when Evelyn pulled the metaphorical rug from under his metaphorical feet.

 

‘I think that’s a good idea too,’ she said. ‘It’s much more likely to manifest itself during the hours of darkness.’

 

‘Darkness adds to the state of sensory deprivation,’ Ciarán added, hammering the final nails into the coffin of Danny’s thoughts of escape. ‘People are much more likely to be receptive to such phenomena in the reduced light conditions of the nocturnal hours.’

 

‘We’ve got plenty of bedrooms,’ Marjorie said. ‘You could have one close to mine, Danny, in case I get frightened in the night.’

 

Danny looked around helplessly, but there seemed no way out of this predicament.

 

‘Ah, shite,’ Mike said, fiddling with his antique recording equipment. ‘Forgot to switch it on.’

 

‘It won’t be any trouble.’ Duncan said, looking as if nothing had troubled him for years, except perhaps Cheryl.

 

‘It will give us the opportunity to test the phenomena for ourselves,’ Ciarán said unhelpfully, now looking quite animated at the prospect of testing something and then completely dismissing it as totally rational. ‘If we get the bags from the car now, we can be set up before it gets dark.’

 

Danny admitted defeat and felt in his pocket for the car keys. He had a feeling it was going to be a long night.

 

End of Part Two.

Next episode: Terrors of the Night.