Beware the Manor House
Title: Beware the Manor House (6/?)
Rating: PG to R
Pairing: Dom/Billy, others implied
Warnings: AU, angst, horror, ghosts, implied murder, violence, scary imagery, etc. This is sort of, but not really, a death fic. Suffice it to say, major characters are no longer living and as such, are in fact dead. But in the spirit of whodunnit and AU, it really doesn’t matter much. M’kay? Just trust me.
Summary: Everybody has a hobby. Some people have an obsession.
Billy woke to darkness. The canopy of a great bed loomed above him, its curtains drawn in a dark cocoon of velvet. The bed itself was unbelievably soft, though dusty, its linens cool to touch but warm around him. His head throbbed faintly and his throat was perilously dry, the only lasting threat he felt of whatever had happened.
He pushed open the curtains to find himself in a bedroom, large by his standards as his entire flat could probably fit inside it. Sliding unsteadily from the high mattress to look outside, he could see the coach house in the settling dusk, dark and abysmally normal in appearance. The thought of what he’d seen in there made his throat tighten up to quell the urge to be ill.
He turned to the room again, presumably one of the upstairs bedrooms he’d been denied before. By the door he found the light switch, the soft light pushing away the leeched colorless dusk and showing a room wallpapered in blue silk with panels and furnishings in walnut. Along with the bed, it held a fireplace, a massive wardrobe (empty, save for a set of new sheets still in the plastic packaging), a dressing table and a writing desk. The desk itself seemed much loved, its varnish cloudy on the writing surface, the pulls of the drawers blackened to a patina. There was nothing inside the drawers but inkstains where spills had long dried up.
Across the room were shelves built into the wall, full of books. They were covered in sheets of dust and cobwebs to where he could hardly read the names. He pushed a thumb along one spine to find the gold leaf on its title coming off in on his hand. Most were in English, but a few were in what he guessed might be Latin. Another looked to be French, L’Anatomie in its title assuming it may be a medical guide of some kind. Volumes of poetry, naturalist’s notebooks, and novels, some of which might have been first editions. Billy wonder just how much a bloke could get on eBay for a collection like this, and this wasn’t even the manor’s library.
Presently he felt a change behind him, a shift in the air pressure that lifted the hairs on his neck and whipped his head around, expecting to see a person walking in. But he was alone, and the bedroom door remained closed.
Who had brought him to this room, when previously it had been off limits to the point of violence? It had a feeling of being occupied, of being lived in, currently, though the dust said otherwise. It gave him the feeling of being in a person’s space, wandering around and touching belongings with their owner watching over his shoulder.
“Dominic?” he said the name tentatively, his voice hoarse and sickly.
The lights flickered just slightly, dimming for a second as though a surge had run through the line, then brightening back to full light again.
“Dominic, if that’s you, can you do it again?”
Immediately, the light flickered again.
He eyed the two wall sconces, old and somewhat mismatched in their Art Deco design, likely both on the same wiring to that single switch. “Prove to me it’s you, Dom. Can you flicker each of these lights separately?”
There was a long pause, then the left hand sconce dimmed independent of the right. In a moment the right sconce did the same, then both, flickering back and forth.
Billy took a deep breath and swallowed, trying to clear his head and work some moisture through his throat. He had no recorders with him, trying to think where he’d left the two he’d had in the coach house, but even then they had no batteries left. He chuckled at how very clever this particular ghost was. So far Dominic had evaded most forms of incontrovertible evidence, though he was more than willing to make himself known.
“So you like lights, do you? Electricity?” he asked, looking at the bandaged cut on his hand from the broken lamp downstairs, and remembering the heavy hum of the one on the landing when he’d first come upstairs. The lights flickered yet again.
“Was that a yes?” Billy asked, and the lights flickered. “Show me something for ‘no’ and we can play Twenty Questions.”
A pause, and then the lights went off briefly before coming back on with the clicking noise of the switch.
“Good. Now maybe we’ll get somewhere,” Billy smiled, settling himself on the large blanket trunk at the bed’s foot and trying to think of what to ask. What he wanted to know most wasn’t easy to phrase as a yes or no question. “Is this your room?”
Yes, the lights flickered.
“Is this the room I couldn’t go into before?”
Yes.
“Are the other rooms off limits?”
No.
“Is this room off limits?”
No, the switch went off, but then flickered yes when it came back on.
“That’s a maybe?” Billy sighed. It didn’t make any sense. He shook his head, thinking aloud, “Why would you practically attack me out there, but not in here?”
He scratched at a tickle on his ear absently, thinking of the welts on his back. The tickle lingered, and he slapped at it, looking around to find a cobweb, feeling in his hair for a spider. The tickle came again, cool against his forehead, like fingers brushing his hair back. Billy went still. “Dominic, is that you touching me?”
The lights flickered.
He shifted backwards slightly, away from the eerie feeling. “Did you bring me in here while I was ill?”
Yes.
Billy brushed away the lingering feeling on his forehead. This Dominic had seemed curious spirit one minute and malicious the next. He had been brought here and had slept, obviously for a whole day in this room, Dominic’s room, unharmed, after an experience Billy had never had in his life and wasn’t keen on repeating. Cate had told him that the spirit here was powerful and angry. He wondered now if it had just been a dream, or if Dominic had somehow physically pulled him into another plane of existence, into another time. The idea was a preposterous as it was intriguing.
“This morning,” he asked, “Did you make it happen? In the coach house?”
There was no answer.
“Dominic,” Billy tried somewhat nervously, “Do you know you’re dead?”
Yes.
“Do you know who killed you?”
Yes, the lights surged hard, sending a hum through the room.
“Okay,” Billy murmured. If that could constitute an emotion, it certainly was a strong one. He rather feared being lashed out at now with this line of questioning, but he wanted to know. He needed to know, though he never thought he’d be rid of the horrible vision in his head. “Were you killed in the coach house?”
No, the switch flicked off, and then on and off, repeatedly. No, no, no.
“Okay, all right, Dom,” Billy held out a placating hand, and surprisingly, felt it tingle as if it had been slapped. “Don’t get mad at me, I just want to understand you.”
The lights surged again, brightening fiercely and then dimming to almost nothing, and the temperature abruptly fell a good twenty degrees. But with a sound like a sigh, the light slowly faded back to normal. Billy understood this as Dominic trying rather hard to physically manifest as he had in the parlor, though that had taken the energy of many more lights in the house.
“Don’t tire yourself, lad,” Billy smiled, “You don’t need to show me everything.”
The lights flickered again, twice, almost as if Dominic were saying, Yes I do, like a despondent child.
“You want to tell me things?”
Yes.
Billy laughed, “Why me? Why not any of the other people you’ve chased away from here?”
No. No.
Billy sighed, trying to figure out what Dominic was trying so hard to say. He chuckled again, imagining a ghostly Dom, just as frustrated as he was. “Dom, my recorder. If I go get it, maybe we could actually talk to each other.”
No. No. No. No.
“Why?” Billy got up, moving toward the door. “It would be so much easier, and I could get a camera as well and see if-“
No. No. No .No. The lights flicked fiercely on and off. The air settled thickly on him as he reached the door, the same heavy anxiousness that the hallway had at the top of the stairs. A tug on his clothes pulled back into the room, and the lights surged hard again, popping and humming.
Billy took a step back, shaking his head. “Dom, you can’t keep me in here like a prisoner.”
No. Yes. No.
“I’m glad we agree,” Billy grumbled, clueless. “If I got my equipment - my machines, you understand? It would be easier for us to communicate.”
No. Yes. No. No.
“Dammit. I don’t know what the fuck you want to say, Dom. What is it? You don’t want us to talk, you don’t want me to leave? What?
No. No. Yes.
“No, yes, what? Which bit? You don’t want me to leave?”
The air crackled statically around him, but Dominic didn’t answer.
“You don’t want me to leave, or you do?”
Randomly, the corner of the area rug at the foot of the bed flipped up, as if kicked in frustration. Billy snorted at it and went for the doorknob.
No. The rug flipped up again.
Billy eyed it warily. Dominic may well just be throwing a tantrum. The logical part of him wanted to believe the window was open, or a vent had come on, and that a simple gust had made the rug move, but he knew that wasn’t the case.
He came back and pushed the corner of the rug back into place with his toe.
It promptly flipped right back over, and the lights flickered a strong yes.
Billy hesitated, then knelt down, took the corner of the rug and pulled it away from the floor.
“Oh god,” he murmured, his heart pounding against his ribs. On the floorboards hidden beneath the rug was a wide stain, dark brown on mahogany, its grain raised and the sheen over it different from the rest, as if all the scrubbing and sanding and refinishing in the world hadn’t removed it.
“Dom, this is where…”
Yes.
Shivering, he spread his hand out and lay it over the darkened floorboards, as if doing so could close a gap in time. “What happened to you?” he whispered, sadness washing over him. “Who did this to you?”
The lights surged hard and died completely, reassembling in a mist on the floor, taking the shape of the same man he’d seen in the parlor, lying beneath him with the stain spread around in an ever-widening pool, draining his life away. Billy could almost feel a heartbeat slowing beneath his palm and with a jolt realized where he was, kneeling above a dying man, precisely in the same place as his killer.
He jumped up, swaying on his feet, and stumbled toward the door, even as the lights swelled back to life.
No, no, blinked the switch, the air converging around him as he reached for the handle.
“I can’t, Dom, I need to get out.”
No. No. No.
“I’ll come back.”
No. No. No. No.
Billy twisted the door handle and pulled it open.
“Billy, don’t go!”
He hesitated at the voice, a plea he could hear with his own ears, calling his name.
Then he was caught in the vicious grip of an unseen hand, yanked out into the hall and driven toward the staircase, every electrical source in the house throwing sparks. The force pushed hard, unstoppable, and he instinctively leaning away as it did not let up at the stairs, it meant to push him all the away down…
His feet slipped down the first few stairs and he flailed, just managing to grab the banister and stop himself tumbling down. The bedroom door slammed shut, sounding as if someone was pounding and kicking on it, and that same scream from inside his head was so fierce that Billy let go and fled down the stairs, covering his ears and squeezing his eyes shut.
Minutes later, when he lifted his head to look and listen, the house was utterly silent and still. He picked himself up off the floor, disgusted to find himself huddling by the entry like a terrified kitten. He made his way down the main hallway to the kitchen where the tap to the sink spluttered before it ran cold. He thrust his hands beneath it and drank deeply, running his wet hands over his face and hair to take away the fever of fear and try to bring reason back into this fucked up place.
Slowly, he moved back through the house to the parlor, staring for the moment at the mess he’d left there, a scattered pile of papers, his audio recorder among them, and the gathered bits of glass from the broken lamp. He set about collecting the papers, pocketing the recorder, feeling more and more like a twat by the second.
This whole experience was a mess, that was what it was. He’d spent three days now tripping around like a complete idiot, cowering at shadows and jumping at every little noise, and still he had no idea what the fuck was going on here.
A light moved across the room, the known, normal light of car headlamps skating around the darkened walls through the windowpanes. Quickly grabbing the papers and the keys he found on the floor of the foyer, he went outside into the cool night, seeing the elderly Mini stop halfway up the drive. Cate climbed out, tugging her coat tightly around her body in the dark, staring unblinkingly at the coach house.
“Your phone is dead,” she informed him as he reached her, her gaze still fixed.
“I’m not surprised,” he answered, looking her over. He debated asking how she found the place, but thought the better of it. “Did you see?”
Her shiver was all the answer he needed.
When she finally pulled her eyes from the coach house to the manor, she seemed perplexed. “Strange.”
She pointed and Billy followed her finger. One window on the upper floor was lit, the lights still turning on and off and flickering sporadically.
“His name is Dominic,” Billy told her, watching the light. “That’s his room.”
“No,” Cate said, her eyes shifting back and forth between the two buildings, the manor and the coach house, her voice the low, certain tone of her premonitions. “There is hatred all over this place. Rage. Vengeance. But not there.” She pointed at the window again. “Not there.”
Billy watched the light in the window pause and flicker.
“There are two.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
Rating: PG to R
Pairing: Dom/Billy, others implied
Warnings: AU, angst, horror, ghosts, implied murder, violence, scary imagery, etc. This is sort of, but not really, a death fic. Suffice it to say, major characters are no longer living and as such, are in fact dead. But in the spirit of whodunnit and AU, it really doesn’t matter much. M’kay? Just trust me.
Summary: Everybody has a hobby. Some people have an obsession.
Billy woke to darkness. The canopy of a great bed loomed above him, its curtains drawn in a dark cocoon of velvet. The bed itself was unbelievably soft, though dusty, its linens cool to touch but warm around him. His head throbbed faintly and his throat was perilously dry, the only lasting threat he felt of whatever had happened.
He pushed open the curtains to find himself in a bedroom, large by his standards as his entire flat could probably fit inside it. Sliding unsteadily from the high mattress to look outside, he could see the coach house in the settling dusk, dark and abysmally normal in appearance. The thought of what he’d seen in there made his throat tighten up to quell the urge to be ill.
He turned to the room again, presumably one of the upstairs bedrooms he’d been denied before. By the door he found the light switch, the soft light pushing away the leeched colorless dusk and showing a room wallpapered in blue silk with panels and furnishings in walnut. Along with the bed, it held a fireplace, a massive wardrobe (empty, save for a set of new sheets still in the plastic packaging), a dressing table and a writing desk. The desk itself seemed much loved, its varnish cloudy on the writing surface, the pulls of the drawers blackened to a patina. There was nothing inside the drawers but inkstains where spills had long dried up.
Across the room were shelves built into the wall, full of books. They were covered in sheets of dust and cobwebs to where he could hardly read the names. He pushed a thumb along one spine to find the gold leaf on its title coming off in on his hand. Most were in English, but a few were in what he guessed might be Latin. Another looked to be French, L’Anatomie in its title assuming it may be a medical guide of some kind. Volumes of poetry, naturalist’s notebooks, and novels, some of which might have been first editions. Billy wonder just how much a bloke could get on eBay for a collection like this, and this wasn’t even the manor’s library.
Presently he felt a change behind him, a shift in the air pressure that lifted the hairs on his neck and whipped his head around, expecting to see a person walking in. But he was alone, and the bedroom door remained closed.
Who had brought him to this room, when previously it had been off limits to the point of violence? It had a feeling of being occupied, of being lived in, currently, though the dust said otherwise. It gave him the feeling of being in a person’s space, wandering around and touching belongings with their owner watching over his shoulder.
“Dominic?” he said the name tentatively, his voice hoarse and sickly.
The lights flickered just slightly, dimming for a second as though a surge had run through the line, then brightening back to full light again.
“Dominic, if that’s you, can you do it again?”
Immediately, the light flickered again.
He eyed the two wall sconces, old and somewhat mismatched in their Art Deco design, likely both on the same wiring to that single switch. “Prove to me it’s you, Dom. Can you flicker each of these lights separately?”
There was a long pause, then the left hand sconce dimmed independent of the right. In a moment the right sconce did the same, then both, flickering back and forth.
Billy took a deep breath and swallowed, trying to clear his head and work some moisture through his throat. He had no recorders with him, trying to think where he’d left the two he’d had in the coach house, but even then they had no batteries left. He chuckled at how very clever this particular ghost was. So far Dominic had evaded most forms of incontrovertible evidence, though he was more than willing to make himself known.
“So you like lights, do you? Electricity?” he asked, looking at the bandaged cut on his hand from the broken lamp downstairs, and remembering the heavy hum of the one on the landing when he’d first come upstairs. The lights flickered yet again.
“Was that a yes?” Billy asked, and the lights flickered. “Show me something for ‘no’ and we can play Twenty Questions.”
A pause, and then the lights went off briefly before coming back on with the clicking noise of the switch.
“Good. Now maybe we’ll get somewhere,” Billy smiled, settling himself on the large blanket trunk at the bed’s foot and trying to think of what to ask. What he wanted to know most wasn’t easy to phrase as a yes or no question. “Is this your room?”
Yes, the lights flickered.
“Is this the room I couldn’t go into before?”
Yes.
“Are the other rooms off limits?”
No.
“Is this room off limits?”
No, the switch went off, but then flickered yes when it came back on.
“That’s a maybe?” Billy sighed. It didn’t make any sense. He shook his head, thinking aloud, “Why would you practically attack me out there, but not in here?”
He scratched at a tickle on his ear absently, thinking of the welts on his back. The tickle lingered, and he slapped at it, looking around to find a cobweb, feeling in his hair for a spider. The tickle came again, cool against his forehead, like fingers brushing his hair back. Billy went still. “Dominic, is that you touching me?”
The lights flickered.
He shifted backwards slightly, away from the eerie feeling. “Did you bring me in here while I was ill?”
Yes.
Billy brushed away the lingering feeling on his forehead. This Dominic had seemed curious spirit one minute and malicious the next. He had been brought here and had slept, obviously for a whole day in this room, Dominic’s room, unharmed, after an experience Billy had never had in his life and wasn’t keen on repeating. Cate had told him that the spirit here was powerful and angry. He wondered now if it had just been a dream, or if Dominic had somehow physically pulled him into another plane of existence, into another time. The idea was a preposterous as it was intriguing.
“This morning,” he asked, “Did you make it happen? In the coach house?”
There was no answer.
“Dominic,” Billy tried somewhat nervously, “Do you know you’re dead?”
Yes.
“Do you know who killed you?”
Yes, the lights surged hard, sending a hum through the room.
“Okay,” Billy murmured. If that could constitute an emotion, it certainly was a strong one. He rather feared being lashed out at now with this line of questioning, but he wanted to know. He needed to know, though he never thought he’d be rid of the horrible vision in his head. “Were you killed in the coach house?”
No, the switch flicked off, and then on and off, repeatedly. No, no, no.
“Okay, all right, Dom,” Billy held out a placating hand, and surprisingly, felt it tingle as if it had been slapped. “Don’t get mad at me, I just want to understand you.”
The lights surged again, brightening fiercely and then dimming to almost nothing, and the temperature abruptly fell a good twenty degrees. But with a sound like a sigh, the light slowly faded back to normal. Billy understood this as Dominic trying rather hard to physically manifest as he had in the parlor, though that had taken the energy of many more lights in the house.
“Don’t tire yourself, lad,” Billy smiled, “You don’t need to show me everything.”
The lights flickered again, twice, almost as if Dominic were saying, Yes I do, like a despondent child.
“You want to tell me things?”
Yes.
Billy laughed, “Why me? Why not any of the other people you’ve chased away from here?”
No. No.
Billy sighed, trying to figure out what Dominic was trying so hard to say. He chuckled again, imagining a ghostly Dom, just as frustrated as he was. “Dom, my recorder. If I go get it, maybe we could actually talk to each other.”
No. No. No. No.
“Why?” Billy got up, moving toward the door. “It would be so much easier, and I could get a camera as well and see if-“
No. No. No .No. The lights flicked fiercely on and off. The air settled thickly on him as he reached the door, the same heavy anxiousness that the hallway had at the top of the stairs. A tug on his clothes pulled back into the room, and the lights surged hard again, popping and humming.
Billy took a step back, shaking his head. “Dom, you can’t keep me in here like a prisoner.”
No. Yes. No.
“I’m glad we agree,” Billy grumbled, clueless. “If I got my equipment - my machines, you understand? It would be easier for us to communicate.”
No. Yes. No. No.
“Dammit. I don’t know what the fuck you want to say, Dom. What is it? You don’t want us to talk, you don’t want me to leave? What?
No. No. Yes.
“No, yes, what? Which bit? You don’t want me to leave?”
The air crackled statically around him, but Dominic didn’t answer.
“You don’t want me to leave, or you do?”
Randomly, the corner of the area rug at the foot of the bed flipped up, as if kicked in frustration. Billy snorted at it and went for the doorknob.
No. The rug flipped up again.
Billy eyed it warily. Dominic may well just be throwing a tantrum. The logical part of him wanted to believe the window was open, or a vent had come on, and that a simple gust had made the rug move, but he knew that wasn’t the case.
He came back and pushed the corner of the rug back into place with his toe.
It promptly flipped right back over, and the lights flickered a strong yes.
Billy hesitated, then knelt down, took the corner of the rug and pulled it away from the floor.
“Oh god,” he murmured, his heart pounding against his ribs. On the floorboards hidden beneath the rug was a wide stain, dark brown on mahogany, its grain raised and the sheen over it different from the rest, as if all the scrubbing and sanding and refinishing in the world hadn’t removed it.
“Dom, this is where…”
Yes.
Shivering, he spread his hand out and lay it over the darkened floorboards, as if doing so could close a gap in time. “What happened to you?” he whispered, sadness washing over him. “Who did this to you?”
The lights surged hard and died completely, reassembling in a mist on the floor, taking the shape of the same man he’d seen in the parlor, lying beneath him with the stain spread around in an ever-widening pool, draining his life away. Billy could almost feel a heartbeat slowing beneath his palm and with a jolt realized where he was, kneeling above a dying man, precisely in the same place as his killer.
He jumped up, swaying on his feet, and stumbled toward the door, even as the lights swelled back to life.
No, no, blinked the switch, the air converging around him as he reached for the handle.
“I can’t, Dom, I need to get out.”
No. No. No.
“I’ll come back.”
No. No. No. No.
Billy twisted the door handle and pulled it open.
“Billy, don’t go!”
He hesitated at the voice, a plea he could hear with his own ears, calling his name.
Then he was caught in the vicious grip of an unseen hand, yanked out into the hall and driven toward the staircase, every electrical source in the house throwing sparks. The force pushed hard, unstoppable, and he instinctively leaning away as it did not let up at the stairs, it meant to push him all the away down…
His feet slipped down the first few stairs and he flailed, just managing to grab the banister and stop himself tumbling down. The bedroom door slammed shut, sounding as if someone was pounding and kicking on it, and that same scream from inside his head was so fierce that Billy let go and fled down the stairs, covering his ears and squeezing his eyes shut.
Minutes later, when he lifted his head to look and listen, the house was utterly silent and still. He picked himself up off the floor, disgusted to find himself huddling by the entry like a terrified kitten. He made his way down the main hallway to the kitchen where the tap to the sink spluttered before it ran cold. He thrust his hands beneath it and drank deeply, running his wet hands over his face and hair to take away the fever of fear and try to bring reason back into this fucked up place.
Slowly, he moved back through the house to the parlor, staring for the moment at the mess he’d left there, a scattered pile of papers, his audio recorder among them, and the gathered bits of glass from the broken lamp. He set about collecting the papers, pocketing the recorder, feeling more and more like a twat by the second.
This whole experience was a mess, that was what it was. He’d spent three days now tripping around like a complete idiot, cowering at shadows and jumping at every little noise, and still he had no idea what the fuck was going on here.
A light moved across the room, the known, normal light of car headlamps skating around the darkened walls through the windowpanes. Quickly grabbing the papers and the keys he found on the floor of the foyer, he went outside into the cool night, seeing the elderly Mini stop halfway up the drive. Cate climbed out, tugging her coat tightly around her body in the dark, staring unblinkingly at the coach house.
“Your phone is dead,” she informed him as he reached her, her gaze still fixed.
“I’m not surprised,” he answered, looking her over. He debated asking how she found the place, but thought the better of it. “Did you see?”
Her shiver was all the answer he needed.
When she finally pulled her eyes from the coach house to the manor, she seemed perplexed. “Strange.”
She pointed and Billy followed her finger. One window on the upper floor was lit, the lights still turning on and off and flickering sporadically.
“His name is Dominic,” Billy told her, watching the light. “That’s his room.”
“No,” Cate said, her eyes shifting back and forth between the two buildings, the manor and the coach house, her voice the low, certain tone of her premonitions. “There is hatred all over this place. Rage. Vengeance. But not there.” She pointed at the window again. “Not there.”
Billy watched the light in the window pause and flicker.
“There are two.”
CHAPTER SEVEN