5. A Trick of the Light
five
A Trick of the Light
Liam
Archer’s place is spectacular.
I don’t think I’ve ever been anywhere so beautiful. Certainly not a home. Certainly not a place you might sleep, wake up, casually make tea for guests while you chat about the weather. While we wait to hear his ghost story.
The place doesn’t look haunted—not that I’m pretending to know what a haunted house looks like, except, well, it should be oldish, shouldn’t it? Hung with cobwebs? Have creaking floorboards and dark corners and cold chills everywhere you go?
This place is the opposite of all that. Except it is old.
It’s clearly been here for a long time; some posh stables that were converted into this…
I want to say ‘house,’ but it feels more like a mansion to me.
His living room slash kitchen area is bigger than the entire council flat I share with my mum.
The ceiling soars high above us, old and enormous, supporting beams of wood on display.
The windows are wide and tall, and sunshine floods in, leaving no spots for any supernatural nasties to be hiding, as far as I can tell.
The gold wallpaper Archer mentioned earlier reflects it back on us, making it seem as if the sun itself is in the room.
The kitchen’s all pastel green and decked out with a million floor-to-ceiling cupboards in some rustic style that looks like it was cut and pasted from a travel magazine.
It’s got a shiny coffee machine, every appliance you could dream of, copper pots sparkling bright, hanging over a kitchen island.
We’re sat around a massive, heavy, no doubt deliberately paint-chipped table, and the tea Archer sets down in front of me now is steaming, adding to the cosy vibe.
I wonder how he manages to make a living. How he manages to keep this place so nice when clearly something’s fractured in his mind.
When his hand moves from my cup, I can’t help but notice again how well-maintained his nails are. I bite mine sometimes, still, when I’m anxious. Which I often am, I guess.
If I could make something of this job, get some money going, a career one day, maybe I’d end up with nice nails like that.
Or maybe I don’t get opportunities like him because I have chipped nails. Because I’m not well-dressed and self-assured the way he is. Maybe it’s some weird chicken-and-egg or Catch-22 thing. I can’t have one without the other, so I’m stuck.
No. I can’t think about things that way. I won’t.
But maybe I will file my nails tonight.
As Archer takes his seat, I wrap my hands, nibbled nails and all, around my pretty teacup, and ask, “When did the activity start?”
He settles bright, clear eyes on mine, and speaks low and confiding, straight to the point. “Maybe a month ago now. I tried to take care of it myself, then, when that had failed, it took me a while to find you. The ExorSquad website was… not SEO optimised.”
To be honest, I’m kind of surprised there’s a website at all. I’m tempted to ask how bad it was, but I’d rather get to the bottom of this guy’s menty-b first. “And have there been… any dramatic changes in your life? That might have happened around that time? That might explain…”
His head tilts to the side, Raul’s face turns to me, and I really have no idea how to phrase this. Whether to ask, ‘Did you lose your therapist?’ ‘Is there something that made you forget to take your meds?’ ‘Did you get a shock so bad you started seeing things?’
But Archer dips back in with a light, joking, “Nothing bad enough to raise the dead.”
I laugh politely. Archer laughs politely. Raul taps impatient fingers across the table.
“No more than usual, anyway,” Archers adds quietly before lifting the tea to his lips.
‘The usual.’ I wonder what the usual is.
I mirror him and take a sip of tea. Unsurprisingly, it’s very good tea.
“When you say you tried to take care of it yourself,” says Raul, eyes scanning the rafters overhead, “what exactly do you mean?”
“Oh.” Archer laughs again, but this time a tinkling, self-deprecating sort of laugh. “Nothing much. Prayers and sage, that sort of thing. Stuff I found on the internet. I don’t know anything about ghosts, obviously.”
“Hmm. So you’ve said,” mutters Raul. There’s something in his tone. Something that sounds almost accusatory. And I personally don’t think it’s a great idea to antagonise the very nice but evidently deranged homeowner.
Archer’s eyes narrow on him. He’s noticed it too. So before either of them can speak again, I interject, “What kind of things have you been… seeing… in your home?”
A sharp sound taps on the window, and all three of our faces snap across.
That strange raven, its beak against the glass…
Tap.
Tap.
Tap.
Archer’s hand falls flat on the table, splayed wide, with an odd pressure, like he’s trying to pause something or slow a negotiation.
“This isn’t the time,” he says. It’s quiet, under his breath.
Then, looking over his shoulder towards the stairs, he repeats, louder, “This isn’t the time,” as if there’s someone there that he’s talking to.
My eyes, like Raul’s, fly to the dark stairwell. Almost imperceptibly, it darkens a little more.
I’m sure of it. I’m sure it’s…
Some shadowy something seeps into the room. Over the floorboards, the wallpaper, the ceiling, a dulling of every surface, inch by inch.
Archer’s up, moving to stand in front of it as it creeps closer, closer.
Raul’s standing a second later, his hand on his gun.
And me… I don’t even move. I can’t. I’m transfixed. It’s something I’ve never seen before—something real. Something…
No. It must be a trick of the light. It has to be.
But Archer looks worried, and his reaction is sending alarm bells through every inch of my body.
“Stop right there,” he says in a firm, clear voice.
And it does. It’s darkness, actual creeping absence of light. But it listens to him, and it stops.
My heart is absolutely hammering in my chest, even as I’m scanning the room for the light trick that could make this possible. My ears are straining for the sound of his accomplice, moving around in the recesses of the house, playing this grand prank.
But all I hear is Raul’s careful step, pressing down on one of those ancient floorboards, setting off a chain reaction that makes the antique chandelier overhead tinkle.
The light glints sharply, throwing half a dozen little white spots down onto his hand, which moves slow and calculated, pulling the gun from his pocket.
“Kraa!” screams the bird.
As if he understands, Archer turns fast. His eyes drop straight to the weapon, then flare with anger. “Don’t you fucking dare.”
Raul brings it up with two hands, pointing it at the stairs. “Out of the way, Mr Gravely, I’ve—”
“Not on your life,” says Archer, stepping boldly in front of the gun.
The whole thing’s like a play, some tragedy being acted out in front of me.
Some drama that seems to have no place or need for me.
Only I can see it in my mind’s eye already, whatever is in that weird gun blasting into Archer’s chest because this asshole Raul really believes in ghosts, and that they’re ‘perpetrators’ who he’s been sent to arrest.
My chair scrapes back, and I’m on my feet. Before I know it, I’ve taken my place by Archer’s side, hands raised like his. “Raul, put the gun down.”
“Are you insane?” he cries. “That’s a ghost, Liam. That’s a fucking ghost right there. We came here to kill ghosts.”
“I never said you could kill it!” Archer shouts.
“What did you think I was going to do with it?” Raul yells back.
“Can we talk about this?” I attempt. “We don’t need to do anything just yet. Not until we know what we’re dealing with.”
But as if it’s trying to prove me wrong, the darkness shifts again. It moves faster, sweeping over every surface, until it enshrouds us completely.
“Kraa!” yells the raven.
A cold descends. A thick, damp chill that seeps through my clothes, into my bones.
And it builds. It’s heavy and it’s freezing, and then suddenly, I’m flying through the air.
It’s like a burst of icy wind just hit me, blew me off my feet.
Pain cracks through my hip, my shoulder, as I crash down onto the floor.
Then a weight, warm and heavy, smelling quite good, when Archer slams down next to me.
“Fuck!” he exclaims. His nice hand falls on my hip. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah?” I don’t know why I said it. I don’t have a fucking clue what’s going on, and I’m scared shitless. But I’m not injured, and something very weird is happening, and I don’t know what else to say.
“Raul, put the gun down now!” Archer yells. He tries to climb to his feet, but that ice wind hits us again, and he slams back into me.
“Not a fucking chance,” Raul responds, and he steps forward into the centre of the room, the chandelier swaying over him in the weird breeze.
His voice turning ragged, Archer throws his gaze on the stairwell. “Please go. Please. Please leave us, and we will fix this!”
“Hooooooaaaaaaarrrrrrhhhhhhh,” comes some deep and horrifying sound. Not words. Some moan that I feel deep in my gut. And then that darkness on the stairs begins to glow.
I’m transfixed. This is really happening.
Some human-like form comes into view, from a shoe, a nice one, a pressed trouser leg, and up. A male form, a man wearing a blue suit like… like he’s stepped straight out of a Jane Austen adaptation. He’s tall and he’s blond, hair looking like it’s been carefully curled for a ball.
I push up to sitting, my mouth open at the sight, though not a word breaks free.
He comes forward, to the very bottom of the stairs, and he’s… he’s smiling. He’s smiling a lopsided and goading smile, exactly as if he’s saying to Raul, ‘Go on. I fucking dare you.’
Archer’s thinking exactly the same thing as I am. I know he is because he says, “Raul, if you don’t put that gun down right now, he’s going to kill you.”
But Raul, too smug or too stupid to heed the warning, smiles back at the ghost. “You think I’m giving up that under-two-hour-kill bonus? Not a chance in hell.”
His fingers squeeze on the trigger. The chandelier tinkles overhead.
“No!” shouts Archer.
There’s a deafening crash and a deluge of dust, and the next thing I know, the chandelier’s on the floor and Raul’s blood is at my feet, seeping across the rug like an ocean of red.