29. Charlie
twenty-nine
Charlie
The tunnel devoured me whole.
My phone torch carved a pitiful wedge of light through the absolute dark. Stone walls pressed close on either side—close enough to touch both at once if I stretched out my arms. The ceiling hung low, forcing me to hunch forward as I descended the uneven steps.
Webs brushed my face. I flinched but kept moving.
The air grew colder with each step. Damp. Heavy.
My foot slipped on moss. I caught myself against the wall, palm scraping rough stone.
Keep going. Bat needs you.
What exactly I was going to do to save the day if I ever reached them remained to be seen. It wasn’t lost on me that my useless self was charging into danger completely empty?handed, without any semblance of a plan.
This was almost certainly suicide.
But Lily’s face kept flashing through my mind.
Five years old and gap-toothed, telling her nursery teacher that her Uncle Charlie could do anything.
Seven years old and making me a wonky, rainbow-beaded bracelet, alongside demands for me to wear it every day.
The way she looked at me when I picked her up from Emily’s—like I’d personally hung every star in the sky.
I couldn’t be the uncle who gave up. Who stayed safe while someone I lo—
While people needed help.
Lily thought I was brave. Clever. Someone who fixed things.
Maybe I could be that person. Just this once.
The tunnel ended abruptly. A dead end? No… a ladder. A wooden, crooked ladder.
Phone between my teeth, I climbed, praying the rotten wood would support me.
Up, up, up.
My head broke through into open air—well, relatively open. A cramped space, maybe ten feet square.
I hauled myself up the last few rungs and—
Cold.
The temperature plummeted so fast my breath misted. Ice crawled across my skin, sinking deeper than the rain had. My lungs seized. The air felt thick. Wrong. Like trying to breathe through cotton wool.
I pushed forward and hit resistance.
Not a wall. Not anything physical. But something that pushed back against my chest, my face, my hands. Like a soap bubble stretched too thin, trembling on the edge of breaking.
My phone screen flickered. The torch dimmed, then flared bright again.
What the fuck—
I shoved harder. The resistance gave way all at once and I stumbled forward, gasping. The wrongness didn’t fade. If anything, it pressed closer. Crawled over my skin like static electricity, raising every hair on my arms. My eyes struggled to adjust, shadows bleeding where they shouldn’t.
You just crossed into the seal. You’re inside it now.
Joy upon joy.
Phone light shaking, I swept it across the space. Wine racks lined one wall, most empty, a few bottles still nestled in the slots. Dark glass furred with dust. The labels had long since rotted away.
An old wooden crate sat in the corner, its lid askew. I glimpsed tarnished silver inside—candlesticks, maybe, or serving platters. Things Lady Grimthorne had wanted kept safe.
A heavy door stood at the far end of the room. Open. Hanging crooked on its hinges.
The storage room she’d locked him in?
I moved closer. The door was thick—reinforced with metal bands, rivets the size of my thumb. Built to keep things secure. Or to keep something in.
Scratches covered the inside surface. Deep gouges in the wood, clustered around the handle. Fingernail marks.
Sounds filtered through the doorway. Shouting. A woman crying. And underneath it all, something that made my skin itch worse than a thousand spiders—a low rumble that felt wrong in my bones.
I stepped through.
The basement proper opened before me—a vast space that swallowed my phone’s meagre light. Exposed beams overhead. Stone pillars supporting the floor above. The taste of copper and fear hung in the thick air.
Brad’s torch lay on the floor, throwing harsh white light across scattered bodies.
Harrison sprawled near the centre of the room, both hands pressed against one foot, face grey with pain. Dark blood pooled beneath him, black in the torchlight. He made small grunting sounds, each breath a struggle.
Evelyn knelt beside him, sobbing. Her hands fluttered uselessly over his body, not touching, just hovering. “Harrison. Harrison, please. We need to—we need to get you to hospital—”
Father Ashworth stood apart from them, his black briefcase open at his feet. He held a silver cross above his head, eyes squeezed shut, lips moving rapidly. Latin, maybe. His other hand clutched a small vial—holy water? His voice rose and fell in rhythmic chanting, desperate and strained.
Movement in the shadows.
Something darker than the darkness itself shifted between the pillars. Not a shape, exactly. More like an absence. A void that consumed the light around it.
Brad noticed me first.
He spun, PolterPulse already raised. The weapon’s barrel locked onto my face.
“Charlie? What the hell?” His eyes were wild. “How did you—”
“Bat?” I called out, voice laced with pure panic. “Bat, where are you?”
Brad’s face twisted. “That fucking ghost can’t help you now.”
I scanned the basement frantically. Nothing. Just shadows and stone and that thing moving between them.
Panic clawed up my throat. He had to be here. He’d been dragged through with the others, Vivian said so—
The darkness surged.
It slammed into me. Something that had weight and force and intention but no physical form. The air crushed out of my lungs. My body flew backwards, smashing into a stone pillar.
My phone sailed from my hand. Glass shattered. The light died.
Pain exploded across my back. I slid down the pillar, gasping.
“Charlie!”
Bat’s voice. Faint. Strained.
He materialised beside me—barely. Translucent. Flickering. He was weak. Severely weak. “You’re supposed to be locked in a cupboard.” His voice sounded thin. Wrong.
“Where’s the fun in that?” I croaked.
“I don’t know.” A ghost of his smile. “After all, there was that time—”
The basement roared.
Not a sound, exactly. More like the air itself screamed. The ground shook. Dust rained from the ceiling beams.
The darkness condensed. Drew itself together between two pillars, forming something almost recognisable. A shape. Vaguely human. Shadows writhing where a face should have been.
Blue light flashed.
Brad fired the PolterPulse. The bolt of energy shot through the shadow-thing, dissipating harmlessly against the far wall.
He fired again. Again. Neon blue strobing through the basement, turning everything into a nightmare of stark light and deeper shadow.
The thing didn’t even flinch.
Harrison lurched to his feet, favouring his mangled foot. Blood soaked through his shoe, dripping onto the stone. He swayed but stayed upright, jaw clenched.
“What do you want?” he boomed. “This is my property. You can’t—we’ll tear the whole place down if we have to—”
Laughter.
Deep. Rich. Cultured.
The sound crawled over my skin like insects.
The darkness moved.
It poured toward Harrison—a wave of nothing, of void, of absence made manifest. Harrison stumbled back, one hand raised as if to ward it off.
The shadows engulfed him.
His scream cut off abruptly.
Then came the sounds.
Crack.
His arm bent the wrong way at the elbow. Bone splintered through skin.
Crack. Crack. Crack.
Ribs. Spine. His legs folding beneath him as every bone shattered simultaneously. His body collapsed like a puppet with cut strings.
But he didn’t fall.
The darkness held him upright, suspended in its embrace.
Harrison’s mouth stretched wide. Too wide. His jaw dislocated with a wet pop.
The shadow forced itself inside.
Down his throat. Into his mouth, his nose, his eye sockets. Black smoke pouring into him, filling him, consuming him from within. His body convulsed. Jerked. His remaining eye bulged in its socket.
Then he went still.
The darkness withdrew. Harrison’s body crumpled to the stone.
Evelyn screamed. And screamed. And screamed.
“Oh fuck.” The words left me in a whimper. “Oh fuck, I’m dead. And Mum’s never going to know. Emily won’t—Lily won’t—”
Father Ashworth dropped to his knees. The cross clattered from his hands. His lips moved faster now, desperate prayers tumbling over each other.
The shadow turned.
Towards Brad.
Brad fired. Blue light flashed again and again, his finger locked on the trigger. “Stay back! Stay the fuck back!”
The darkness glided forward.
Brad grabbed my arm. Yanked me off the ground. Shoved me forward—directly into the path of the approaching void.
“Take him! Take him instead!”
“NO!” Bat shrieked.
We tumbled down together, Brad and me, his utility belt snagging something. The buckle gave way. Tools scattered across the stone—salt pouches, the SpecterTrack monitor, spare batteries.
Something else too, landing near my face.
Long. Thin. Off-white, yellowed with age.
A finger bone.
Margery Darke’s fucking finger bone.
The one I’d ordered him to put back.
“You absolute—”
Brad’s body rocketed upward.
The force lifted him clean off his feet. His skull cracked against the basement ceiling with a sickening thud.
The PolterPulse flew from his grip. It hit the far wall, plastic casing splitting open. Blue sparks erupted from the shattered components. The weapon clattered to the floor, smoke curling from its broken circuits.
Then Brad dropped.
The darkness descended with him.
It poured into his mouth. His nose. His ears. Black smoke forcing itself inside while his body convulsed on the stone. His back arched. His fingers clawed at nothing.
His eyes went wide. Terrified. Then empty.
The void withdrew. Brad’s body collapsed beside Harrison’s.
Guess his rugby muscles didn’t save him in the end. A laugh bubbled up my throat. High and cracked and completely unhinged.
I was next. Obviously I was next. Thirty-four years old and I’d die in a haunted basement holding a dead witch’s finger and my last thought would be about Brad’s stupid fucking thighs.
My hand closed around the bone.
Margery Darke’s finger. My only defence between myself and violent death. A witch’s finger.
Except she wasn’t a witch. Just a woman who’d been murdered and called a liar.
The shadow turned toward me.