Chapter 1
ALEX
Alex’s hire car struggled up the hill, jolting back and forth as she failed to navigate potholes of truly epic proportions.
The rain made visibility hopeless, the headlights barely showing her anything further than a few yards ahead.
There were no streetlights out here. As a city girl, she felt like she was crawling along, feeling her way in the dark.
By the time she’d left the village of Kilfayne, which passed for the last bastion of civilisation around here, the rain came down like Niagara Falls and the night closed around her.
She should have had plenty of time, planning to get to the house well before dark.
But she’d got stuck behind a collision, and a tractor, and every other inconvenience possible. And it just got later and later.
Beyond the hedgerows, the trees made the road into a blind and twisting alley.
There was nowhere to turn around. She was halfway up a mountain.
Kilfayne was a good twenty minutes behind her now.
And this was the only road – a generous word for the mud track she found herself on – to ‘The Big House’.
Wildewood Hall. Ancestral home of the de Wilde family. Her grandfather’s home, and a line stretching back before him all the way back to God alone knew when. The estate he had left to Theo.
Hers now, God help her.
Once again, she wondered what on earth she was doing.
It was all her twin brother’s fault. That was the story of her entire life.
Coming back was a mistake. She knew that. Everyone knew that.
And yet here she was.
The place that had claimed the life of her brother. And before that her father. And ultimately, all her ancestors before them as well, she supposed.
It was so isolated and cut off, a law unto itself, Gran used to say.
Almost fondly, or perhaps that was because she had been an old woman talking to children.
Her grandmother, the little Alex could remember of the woman, had come from Kilfayne, and wasn’t as reserved as those born to the de Wilde name.
When Alex’s grandfather had told her, in those haughty tones, not to spin wild tales, Gran had just laughed and spun a new one, even wilder.
Tale after tale, of monsters and lost loves, of the children of the forest, of the walker in the woods, of the hungry grass and the endless appetites of lost gods…
Alex shivered at the memory. She blamed those tales, and the loss of her father, for imprinting such haunting dreams on her. Wildewood Hall was the last place on the whole bloody planet she wanted to go back to.
But it wasn’t like she had a lot of choice.
Theo hadn’t left a will. He’d only been in his thirties after all and things like wills were not on his radar.
The only things her twin brother had cared about were ecology, specifically trees, and this wretched house, which was almost swallowed up by its associated forest, left to him by their grandfather a few years ago.
Probably as revenge. Or at least out of spite.
Theo hadn’t seen it that way of course. Theo was a constant beacon of optimism and hope, a shining light in the world. He could do no wrong. The golden child.
God, she had adored him. Even if he had driven her mad.
Alex hated this place almost as much as Theo loved it. She hadn’t been here in twenty years, and she still broke out in a cold sweat just thinking about it.
That the house was now hers would probably send their grandfather spinning in his miserable grave. So at least there was that.
How Gran would have laughed.
It was so dark and miserable that Alex almost missed the gates, which stood open on either side of the lane.
It was the only indication that she’d reached her destination, and that this was the place where the so-called road ended and the drive began.
They didn’t look like they had been closed in years.
She hadn’t come back here for their grandfather’s funeral. Theo had been buried with their mother just outside Dublin rather than in the de Wilde family vault here.
As she passed through their slated shadows, a shiver ran up her spine, even though she had the heat on full in the car. The windscreen wipers ground away, barely clearing the view ahead for more than a second.
She didn’t have to be here. She could let the lawyers handle it all. She ought to let the lawyers handle it all. She just wanted to sell the wretched pile of ancient bricks and horrors. And that was what she would do once she had everything sorted out.
But she needed to know what happened to Theo. And to Dad, if she was honest. What really happened. She didn’t believe for one second that either death had been an accident.
Wildewood Hall was the only place she was going to find out any of that.
When she’d told the lawyers they hadn’t sounded happy. If she decided to take up residence, they told her, it could further complicate matters. Better to leave it all to them. They kept stalling over some detail or another. The sooner Wildewood was out of her life, the better.
Now it seemed the lawyers weren’t just driving up their bill.
Of course, the house was hers to do with as she pleased, they said.
But there were difficulties with the entailment and the caretaker agreement apparently.
And local issues regarding the woodlands on the estate, the use of the land and the like.
She wasn’t quite sure what Theo had got up to but his mind had always been on ecology rather than legalities so heaven alone knew what she was walking into.
When she’d finally got hold of the family solicitors, they’d sent her contact details for the caretaker, Mr Walker.
But when she’d emailed him, she hadn’t even received a reply for over a week.
Not even when she sent her arrival time and asked him to confirm receipt by return.
It was only this morning, as she’d picked up the car at the airport, ready to set off, that the single, terse message had appeared.
I’ll have the master suite ready for you.
Just that. To be honest she wasn’t sure what she had been expecting, but something more than that. Not joy or delight, sure. It was all far too complicated for that. But something.
Gabe had just laughed when he rang to check she’d landed safely. He’d said LAX was only eleven hours or so away if she wanted to turn around and come straight home. She assumed he thought that was funny. The thing about her ex was he always found himself way more hilarious than she did.
They were still close. After all, they still worked together, agreeing that they were much better as friends and business partners than anything else. Gabe was best friends with everyone.
It could have been so much worse, she supposed. And he always had her back. Even now. Especially supporting her with the notoriety and the fickle fame from being the great debunker on The Ghost Patrol. And all the fall-out from that.
She wasn’t cut out for the way that about half the internet was obsessed with her, not like the others. It was one of the reasons she’d decided to come to Wildewood in person. To get away from it. The Sanderson case…
No one liked being exposed as a fraud. Ted Sanderson least of all.
He had taken to the internet, and the internet had loved him with all his obsessions and righteous indignation.
He turned his ire on her particularly and they followed joyfully.
Apparently this was all her fault. Getting herself out of Dodge had seemed like the best possible idea.
The money from the TV show was keeping her afloat, and would for some time. And she had a book to write.
The Sceptic’s Sceptic’s Guide to Dashing Hopes and Destroying Dreams.
Yeah, her publisher would love that title.
This was a sabbatical and an escape. But she had simply had enough of the whole crazy circus.
And once she had sold Wildewood Hall she could decide what she would do next, on her own terms.
Turning past another bank of trees – no wonder Theo was obsessed with the place, trees everywhere, native woodland, untouched for centuries – the view ahead suddenly opened up and drove any other thoughts from Alex’s mind.
The house was silhouetted against the darkness of the night’s sky, a few lights on the ground floor illuminating the tall symmetrical windows and the portico entrance.
A grand building, parts of which dated back to the Normans.
You’d never know, after so many changes and additions over generations of her father’s line.
It loomed over her little car as she parked, almost far too large to be real.
God, if Gabe and the others could see this nightmare straight out of a horror movie they’d lose their shit completely.
Just as well she’d insisted that she’d do this alone, that it was her responsibility.
The very thought of having The Ghost Patrol team here in force sent another shiver through her that wasn’t about the cold, or the house. They were her friends, and they were professionals. But she knew what would happen.
Gabe would be insufferable. Daphne would swoon about the place.
Eduardo would hide behind the equipment.
Worst for her would be Arnold digging deep into the history – her family history – like a kid in a candy shop, and who knew what he’d find.
The things she knew were bad enough. She’d be left there, the lone voice of reason, the sceptic’s sceptic, trying to hold it all to some version of actual reality while being the eternal killjoy, disproving every wild theory they came up with.
They’d alienate every single local in the vicinity with their antics and make her a laughing stock.
And that would be before the whole thing aired.
Then her so-called fans would get in on the act.
It was exhausting just thinking about it.
Staying here, off the grid, away from all the madness, made perfect sense.
No one to come up with another amazing scheme for fortune and glory which capitalised on the worst experience of her life, thank you very much, Gabe.
No creepy messages or flowers or threats disguised as adoration.
No horde of stalkers unleashed on her by a man who had abused his own children in the pursuit of fame.
Exposing him on live TV, and compounding it by testifying at his trial, was still something she was proud of.
Even if it had destroyed her LA life as well.
Sending her running back here.
Alex’s attention was drawn inexorably to the house.
It wasn’t symmetrical, like the great Georgian houses, or towered and turreted like the gothic ones.
It was odd, sprawling across the land, as if it had grown by itself rather than something built by men.
She tried to shake off the idea that the house was staring back at her.
Daring her to move. She didn’t know how long she sat there, memories flooding through her mind.
The trees thrashing overhead, with a roar like the ocean, running through thick forest, tripping over roots and sliding on wet moss, her breath dammed up in her throat, her heart thundering.
The cold arched roof of stones closing over her and the stench of mulch.
The darkness pressing in on her, suffocating her.
Dad’s hands falling still, limp on the rich and hungry earth.
The gleam of gold beneath rotting foliage.
The taste of blood in her mouth, choking her, and the world blurring through tears and terror.
Alex tried to make herself breathe again, in and out, calmly, tried to still her racing heart. She could do this. She had to. For Theo.
Out of nowhere a fist struck the window right beside her head, a series of rapid thuds, and Alex screamed.