3. Charlie #2
“I’m out here exploring the world, yeah?
Getting to see places most people never do.
Historic manors, ancient castles, proper old buildings with character.
” He patted the dashboard affectionately.
“Plus I’ve scored this company car because I’ve been with ExorSquad for an entire year now.
Employee of the month three times running. ”
I looked around the interior of the Ford Focus.
The upholstery had more stains than a crime scene.
The passenger door handle hung at an odd angle, held on by what appeared to be gaffer tape.
Through the windscreen, where the bonnet didn’t quite align properly, was that awful hand-painted ExorSquad logo.
The ghost looked more melted than menacing, its features dripping down the paintwork like a Salvador Dalí nightmare.
I’d bet my last tenner Gerald had done it himself in his garage one Sunday afternoon, probably drunk.
This wasn’t a company car. This was a 2002 banger held together by duct tape and delusion.
“Right,” I said. “The perks.”
“And the sense of accomplishment.” Brad’s voice took on that earnest quality again. “Knowing I’m out there saving lives, yeah? Protecting families from genuine supernatural threats. You can’t put a price on that.”
I snorted before I could stop myself.
Brad’s eyes flicked to me. “What?”
“Nothing.”
“No, go on. What’s funny?”
The words bubbled up, accumulated frustration finding its target. “Oh, come on. How long are you going to keep this up for?”
“Keep what up?”
“This.” I gestured vaguely at everything—the car, him, the road ahead. “This whole act. I know this company is a joke. A con. Gerald’s taking money from desperate people, probably faking evidence, and paying us pennies to play along with his ghost-busting fantasy.”
Brad stared straight ahead, exhaling slowly through his nose.
“Gerald warned me you were a non-believer.”
“Of course I don’t believe in ghosts.” I let out a forced, hollow laugh. “Why would I believe in something there’s no scientific proof of? Show me empirical evidence. Peer-reviewed studies. Anything that isn’t blurry photographs and creaky floorboards.”
“Sometimes you don’t need scientific proof. Sometimes you just need to experience it.”
The car fell silent except for the rumble of the engine and the whisper of tyres on tarmac. Brad’s jaw worked like he was chewing over more words, but he didn’t say anything.
I turned back to the window, but the countryside had lost whatever meagre appeal it had held earlier. Now it just looked grey. Empty.
Emily’s face floated up in my memory, younger, rounder with teenage softness. She’d been thirteen when Dad died. For months afterwards, she insisted she kept seeing glimpses of him around the house. Could hear him moving in the hallway at night. Could smell his aftershave in the living room.
Mum had cried every time Emily brought it up.
I’d pulled my sister aside one evening, cornered her in her bedroom. Told her she needed to stop. That she was making things worse. That grief did funny things to people’s heads, made them see patterns where there weren’t any, hear sounds that had simple explanations.
That Dad was gone. Really gone. And pretending otherwise was only hurting everyone.
She’d stared at me with those wide brown eyes—Dad’s eyes—and nodded.
She’d stopped after that. Thankfully.
Obviously, she hadn’t been trying to upset us. It had just been her coping mechanism. Kids did that sort of thing. Made up stories to make the unbearable bearable. I understood that, even then. But Mum had been falling apart, and someone had to keep things together.
The M4 eventually gave way to smaller roads. A-roads became B-roads, which became narrow country lanes barely deserving the designation. Hedgerows pressed in on both sides, branches scraping against the Focus like fingernails on chalkboard.
After we almost slammed straight into a tractor, Brad remained hunched over the steering wheel, navigating the twisting route with actual concentration. Good. At least he’d stopped talking.
Google Maps led us through villages that looked like they’d been preserved in aspic since the 1950s—stone cottages, thatched roofs, a pub called The Struggling Ploughman that probably served exactly two types of beer and disappointment.
Something grew inside me as we got closer. Not dread, exactly. More like… anticipation.
I’d spent last night falling down a Wikipedia rabbit hole about Grimthorne Manor.
Built in 1747 by Lord Reginald Grimthorne, third Baron of something-or-other.
Georgian architecture, symmetrical facade, all that neoclassical bollocks the aristocracy had been mad for.
The Grimthorne family had owned most of the surrounding area back then—those landed gentry types who thought they had divine right to everything they could see from their windows.
But the manor’s real claim to fame came much later.
1959. Vivian Starling.
Even I knew that name, vaguely. She’d been massive in the fifties—proper Hollywood glamour transplanted to British cinema.
Blonde hair in those perfect pin curls, crimson lipstick, curves poured into evening gowns.
Every magazine cover, every gossip column.
The face that launched a thousand perfume adverts.
She’d died at Grimthorne during some weekend party.
The details got murky depending on which source you believed.
The official inquest said she’d fallen out of an upper-floor window during a séance—because of course wealthy socialites in the fifties had nothing better to do than play at summoning spirits whilst drunk.
But the tabloids at the time had gone wild with speculation. Was she pushed by a jealous rival? A scorned lover? Had she jumped after some romantic tragedy? One particularly breathless account claimed they’d actually summoned something that night, something that had driven Vivian to her death.
The medium who’d conducted the séance vanished afterwards. Never heard from again. Two other guests had nervous breakdowns. One later swore in an interview that he’d felt “a presence” rush past him moments before Vivian fell.
Course, it was all rubbish. Attention-seeking from traumatised witnesses, newspapers selling copies with sensationalism. Someone had likely been shagging someone else’s spouse, there’d been a row, Vivian had got caught in the middle whilst absolutely pissed, and gravity had done the rest.
But the story stuck. Ghost hunters had been crawling over Grimthorne for decades. Every paranormal investigation show from the seventies onwards had done an episode there. Urban legend had it that people still saw a blonde woman in a grey dress wandering the gardens.
Absolute rubbish.
Still, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t curious.
Not about ghosts—about the building itself.
About standing in a place where history had happened, however tragic.
About seeing firsthand how Gerald’s scam worked, what props Brad would plant, what tricks he’d pull to convince the clients they’d got their money’s worth.
Maybe I’d finally have concrete proof of the con. Something I could take to… well, someone. Trading Standards? The police? Did fraud even cover fake ghost hunting?
The hedgerows gave way to open fields. A sign flashed past: Grimthorne, 2 miles.
My stomach did a strange little flip.
Not long after that, Brad’s phone chirped its final instruction, and we turned down a long, tree-lined drive.
And there it was.
Grimthorne Manor.
“Bloody hell,” I breathed.
It rose from the landscape like something out of a gothic novel, all symmetrical Georgian grandeur and looming presence.
Three storeys of honey-coloured stone, darkened by age and weather to something closer to amber.
Tall sash windows marched across the facade in perfect rows—or would have been perfect if several panes hadn’t been cracked or missing entirely.
The roof sagged slightly in the middle, tiles slipping like loose teeth.
Two wings stretched out from the main building, enclosing a courtyard. Massive chimneys jutted up at intervals, dark against the grey sky. Ivy crawled up the walls, covering entire sections of stonework in thick green blankets and completely obscuring some windows on the ground floor.
It looked like a film set. Like someone had deliberately designed it to be as haunted as possible. All it needed was a crack of thunder and some dramatic lightning.
The only other thing missing from the full gothic experience was the gates magically swinging open to welcome us.
Instead, they remained firmly shut.
Massive black wrought-iron gates, at least twelve feet tall, with elaborate scrollwork forming patterns that were hard to distinguish with all the rust. A thick chain wrapped through the bars, secured with a padlock the size of my fist.
Brad pulled the Focus to a stop directly in front of them and sat there, engine idling.
We waited.
Nothing happened.
Brad leaned forward slightly, as if the gates might respond to his sheer willpower and swing open of their own accord.
Still nothing.
One minute passed. Then another.
“Are we really just waiting for them to open?” I asked.
Brad pressed his lips together. “I’m sure they will in a second.” He shot me a look, then sighed and killed the engine.
Silence rushed in to fill the space. No birdsong. No wind. Just absolute, oppressive quiet that made my ears ring.
We got out.
The air smelled of damp earth and rotting leaves. Colder than London, with that particular autumn chill that seeped through clothes and settled into bones.
I pulled my jacket tighter. Brad, of course, stood there in his shorts and polo shirt like the temperature was a personal challenge he refused to fail.
A small grey intercom box clung to the stone pillar beside the gates, the plastic cracked and weathered. Brad pressed the button.
Nothing. Not even a crackle of static.
He pressed it again, holding it down longer this time.
Still nothing.