4. Charlie
four
Charlie
The preliminary survey, as Brad called it, turned out to be eight hours of pure torture.
Not ghosts. Not flying hammers or spectral apparitions. Just Brad.
Brad with his clipboards and his meticulous room-by-room inspections and his bloody commentary on everything.
Brad explaining the “proper technique” for documenting architectural anomalies.
Brad demonstrating the “correct posture” for holding an EMF meter, as if there were a wrong way to grip a plastic box.
Before moving upstairs, we covered the ground floor twice. Every room catalogued. Every dusty corner examined. My handwriting had deteriorated from neat annotations to illegible scrawls that looked like a spider had died in ink.
“Here.” Brad thrust the EMF meter into my palm without warning. The device beeped, displaying a swirl of colours—green, yellow, amber. “Tell me what you’re reading.”
I stared at it. “The colours?”
“Specific frequencies, Charlie. We went over this.”
Had we? I’d zoned out somewhere around the second hour of Brad’s monologue about electromagnetic fields and their relationship to paranormal activity. Something about baseline readings and spike patterns. The words had blurred together into meaningless noise.
Brad snatched it back with a disgusted grunt and pulled out a second device—a Kestrel 5500FW Meter, according to the label. Compact, pocket-sized, covered in more buttons than seemed necessary.
“Environmental data,” he said, waving it like a wand. “Temperature, humidity, barometric pressure. Entities create disturbances. Cold spots. Atmospheric anomalies.”
He swept the device through the room—the library, though most of the shelves stood empty. The Kestrel beeped steadily. Brad’s eyes narrowed.
“There.” He pointed to the far corner. “Temperature drop. Significant.”
I followed his gesture. The corner looked identical to the rest of the room—dusty, abandoned, depressing.
“Three degrees colder than the rest of the space.” Brad’s voice took on that annoying edge, the one he got when he thought he’d found something. “Classic cold spot.”
I glanced up. “Um… I hate to break it to you, but there’s a broken window right there.”
Brad ignored me. He’d already pulled out his clipboard, scribbling notes with the intensity of a man solving a murder. The EMF meter sang in his other hand, colours shifting.
“Something’s here.” He paced the corner, practically vibrating. “Can you feel it?”
I felt cold. Because of the window.
“The mirror.” Brad gestured to an ornate frame on the wall, the glass clouded with age and grime. “Spirits are drawn to reflective surfaces. It’s a threshold. A gateway.”
“Right.”
He crouched, running the Kestrel along the skirting board. His attention had narrowed to this single corner, this single theory. The rest of the manor ceased to exist.
Perfect.
“Listen, we should split up now,” I said, keeping my voice casual. “Cover more ground. Get this finished faster.”
Brad grunted. Didn’t even look at me.
I took that as permission and slipped out before he could change his mind.
The hallway swallowed the sound of Brad’s muttering. Silence rushed in, thick and wonderful. My shoulders dropped. The tension in my jaw eased.
Peace at last.
I pulled out my phone on instinct, then remembered. No signal.
Without the distraction of scrolling through Reddit or sending my friends photos of this ridiculousness, I had nothing but Grimthorne Manor for entertainment.
The staircase loomed ahead, grand and imposing.
Wide steps, carved bannisters, ornate architectural detail that probably cost a fortune to restore.
I climbed slowly, my footsteps echoing in the empty space.
The first floor held more abandoned rooms, more dust sheets covering furniture. The second floor, the same.
Another staircase, narrower this time. Servants’ quarters, maybe. The walls pressed closer. The air thinned.
The attic stairs were barely wide enough for one person. Steep. The wood protested under my weight, creaking with each step. The temperature dropped—not supernatural, just the reality of unheated spaces in old buildings. My breath misted.
The attic door hung slightly ajar.
I pushed it open. Hinges shrieked.
The space stretched long and low, the ceiling slanting sharply where it met the roof.
Boxes lined the walls, stacked haphazardly.
Furniture hulked under tarps, the shapes vaguely sinister in the last of the day’s light filtering through grimy dormer windows.
Cobwebs draped from the rafters like tattered curtains.
I froze mid-step, scanning each strand for movement.
Empty. All of them empty. Yet my shoulders didn’t relax.
Somewhere up there, hidden in the shadows and grime, they were watching.
Waiting. Spiders always know when you’re most vulnerable.
The clipboard trembled slightly in my grip.
I forced myself to focus on something else. Dust. Dust coated everything. Thick. Undisturbed.
Except it wasn’t entirely undisturbed, was it? Footprints marked the floor. Recent ones. Workmen, probably. Or Harrison, checking the space before the renovation.
I stepped inside. The floorboards groaned.
Good. Brad would be thrilled with attic measurements. Height, width, temperature readings. Maybe that would satisfy his need for thoroughness and we could call it a day. Make dinner. Ignore each other until morning.
I pulled out the clipboard, scrawling quick notes. Dimensions estimated. Condition: derelict. Potential hazards: structural integrity questionable, possible rodent infestation. Definitely spiders. Big ones.
A prickle ran down my neck.
I stopped writing.
The air suddenly felt different. Heavier. Like the moment before a storm, when the pressure shifts and the world holds its breath.
A floorboard creaked behind me.
I didn’t want to turn around. Every instinct screamed not to turn around. Don’t look. Keep writing. It’s just the house settling. Old buildings do that. They expand and contract. Physics. Normal, boring physics.
I turned around.
Nothing.
Just boxes. Furniture. Shadows pooling in corners.
Dust motes drifted through the air, caught in the weak light from the window. Yet… they moved strangely—not falling, not rising, but swirling in patterns that didn’t match the stillness of the room. Spirals. Deliberate.
“Hello?” The word slipped out before I could stop it. A whisper.
Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.
I shook my head, annoyed. This was exactly how the workmen’s imaginations had conjured up ghost stories. Old house, creepy atmosphere, isolation. The brain filled in the gaps. Created threats where none existed.
Except the hammer. That had actually flown across a room, according to Evelyn. That was strange.
The motes spiralled faster.
I backed towards the door. “Right. Cool. Very atmospheric. Well done, Grimthorne.”
My fingers found the handle. Twisted.
Locked.
Ice flooded my veins.
I twisted again. Harder. The handle didn’t budge.
You have got to be fucking kidding me.
“Brad?” My voice cracked. I cleared my throat, tried again. “Brad, this isn’t funny!”
Silence answered. No footsteps. No reply.
And Brad wasn’t a slight man. Those stairs had screamed under my weight—they’d have bloody well announced his arrival like a foghorn. I’d have heard him. Would’ve had plenty of warning.
I rattled the handle. Nothing. The door might as well have been welded shut.
“Brad!” I slammed my palm against the wood. “Open the door!”
The sound echoed, then died. Swallowed by the attic’s oppressive stillness.
My chest tightened. I sucked in a breath, forced myself to think. Panic wouldn’t help. There had to be another way out. Houses like this always had servant’s access, hidden passages, something.
A hatch. There’d be a hatch somewhere, leading to the roof for… maintenance! Yes, that would be it.
I scanned the ceiling, searching the shadows between rafters. Nothing. Just beams and cobwebs and that awful slanting roof pressing down like the lid of a coffin.
Fine. The window, then. Tiny, filthy, but technically large enough for a person to squeeze through. I could climb out onto the roof, edge along to a drainpipe or—
My gaze caught on the drop beyond the glass. I was three storeys up. Four, if the attic counted as a storey. The roof tiles looked ancient, crumbling at the edges. One wrong step and I’d be the manor’s newest permanent resident.
Maybe my ghost could haunt Brad. Follow him around. Move his clipboards.
Not funny. Not remotely funny.
I pulled out my phone. Still no signal. Obviously.
Right. Fine. Brad would come looking eventually.
He’d finish his meticulous examination of that bloody corner and realise I’d been gone too long.
He’d trudge up here, all superior and smug, and unlock the door.
I’d endure his lecture about protocol and staying together, and then we’d go back to ignoring each other.
Simple.
I sat down on a trunk near the window, more dust puffing up around me. My pulse hammered. The attic pressed in, all wrong angles and shadows that moved when I wasn’t looking directly at them.
Don’t think about it. Just wait. Brad will come.
I drummed my fingers on my thigh. Stopped when the sound felt too loud. Too much like an invitation.
A shape caught my eye—leaning against the far wall, half hidden behind a stack of boxes. A familiar curve. The distinctive silhouette.
A guitar.
I crossed the attic before I’d consciously decided to move. The case looked ancient, leather cracked and peeling. I knelt, flicking open the latches. They protested, stiff with age.
The acoustic guitar inside was battered. Scratches marred the body, the wood darker where fingers had pressed against it for hours. Someone had loved this once. Played it until the strings wore grooves into the fretboard.
I lifted it out. The weight settled into my hands like muscle memory.
When was the last time I’d held a guitar? Two years? Three? Longer? Back when my friends would encourage me to play at open mic nights.