Beware the Manor House
Title: Beware the Manor House (3/?)
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.
Mustard from the fast food burger dripped down his palm while he read a few pages of what he’d collected in the library. By late afternoon he had a folder full of stories copied out, anything he thought could be connected.
He'd spent a long and sleepless night in a motel just inside of town. Truthfully, he was excited. This was possibly the most phenomenal case he'd had, and he'd barely even begun. Ghost-hunting was a hobby, an obsession, really; a bid to understand things that couldn't be explained. But more often than not it was disappointing. This was something else. This was absolutely the real McCoy, and the dull sting on his back was proof.
He jumped from his reverie as his mobile rang, absently wiping his hand down his shirt to answer.
"Hullo?"
"You didn't listen."
Billy sighed, "No, Cate, I'm afraid not."
She echoed his sigh, but said nothing else.
"What? You have a bad feeling again? Are your ears twitching?"
"Billy," She warned, though her tone was gentle. "He has so much hatred. He's angry you’re there."
"I figured that part out all by my onesies, hen,” Billy ignored her concern, "You should see the state of my back."
"And you should see the state of mine," she returned hotly.
Billy boggled a little. "You… you can’t be serious. That's not even physically poss-"
"You understand very little about possibility, Billy," she retorted.
Billy sighed once again, shaking his head. "Cate, you know I don't understand your… connection to me, or whatever it is. But I'm all right with this. Truly. I think I might have something on this one."
"I don't expect you to trust me. You're always a skeptic first," she spoke with a quiet resignation. "You must be careful, Billy. With yourself. With him. He is more powerful than you know."
Billy stared blankly at the pages before him. "He's a ghost, Cate. That's all he is."
The phone clicked, and went to dial tone.
*
The lock stuck firmly against the key, and would not give until he heaved the knob upwards while turning, but eventually he was granted entry.
The time had long run out in his cameras. He replaced batteries and video cards in all three and then found a place to read, flicking on the lamp on a table in the parlor while dusk began to settle in. From his pocket he withdrew a digital voice recorder, hit the button to record and set it carefully upright on the table beside him, then got cozy in a dusty armchair with his findings on his lap.
He sat for a good ten minutes reading before the voice recorder beside him fell over. It was exactly the signal he'd been waiting for.
"I've been out reading today, at the libraries and town hall," he spoke to the house, unconcerned at an inanimate object moving of its own accord. "It's really amazing, the sort of records that are kept throughout history. I went through all sorts of certificates, property deeds, bank records, newspapers… you name it, some bloke kept it for whatever reason."
There was no response, so he continued, "Milton Keynes. Do you know, I never knew this shite before. Started up in the sixties, with all that ultra modern minimalist architecture and the hippies and the peace movement and all that. It’s probably all the Beatles fault, this. I was just a babe in Glasgow when it started up here. People have lived here for centuries before though, in the little villages. Haversham, Linford, Stratford. They’re more like suburbs nowadays. I wonder when you lived here."
The table lamp turned itself off, throwing the parlor into only what light sunset was pulled in through the windows. Billy calmly turned it back on and flipped to other pages. "See, according to the deeds I found, this house was built in 1874, owned by a physician by the name of Monaghan."
Billy felt the air temperature physically drop around his knees by at least ten degrees or more. "Is Monaghan your name?"
He got no answer and flipped through more copies. "Monaghan had apparently managed to work his way up in society. I imagine he must have done well for himself to be able to build up an estate like this, must have had ties to people high up. Doctors weren't generally land owners in those days, were they? Certainly not a place like this. No, they were middle class in Victoria’s day. Most of them worked off the back of a horse making house calls."
The cold spot spread throughout the room. Billy leaned forward, trying to feel how far it went. "Are you this… Dr. Monaghan?"
It felt very much as if he was being watched from all sides, but nothing happened and he sighed, reading through the various documents and wondering if he was even on the right track. He rewound the recorder and turned it up, but there were no sounds around or between his own voice.
In shuffling through the piles of copy, several of the papers slipped from his knees and whispered to the floor. He knelt to pick them up from the dusty rug, his hands reaching out for the pages that had gone the farthest.
A most unnatural sound issued all around, loud and yet not, sending a fierce chill sweeping through him. It was as if someone was standing over him and screaming, only the sound came from inside his own head. He scrambled for the paper on the rug, but it stuck down like it was glued, and that horrible sound continued so close and heavy…
Suddenly a freezing grasp had him by the face, like cold dead hands on his cheek, on the back of his head, forcing his nose down, down to the floor, to the paper beneath his face. With a shriek the sound cut off he was suddenly released, his own instinct to fight throwing him over backwards.
Billy fell hard on his backside, gasping for breath, the paper crumpled in his fingers. He stared around, trying to place the attacker, but of course no one was there. "Christ," he heaved, still panting as he climbed to his knees, "Really mate, I bloody well know you're here, you don't have to go all Linda Blair on me, all right?"
He smoothed out the paper in his fingers and tilted it towards the light. It was a copy of an old local newspaper that he didn't recall looking at. Three quarters of the way through his research, he'd downed multiple coffees and made copies of practically anything with bleary-eyed indiscretion, so that he didn't remember this article was no surprise. It dated to 1888, and detailed the infamous Jack The Ripper murders under a big headline. This seemed to be the second of them, the prostitute by the name of Dark Annie.
"Mate, you're not going to tell me…" Billy laughed in disbelief where he knelt on the carpet. Whitechapel was a far cry from Milton Keynes, there was no way… but then a smaller article off to the right of the main story caught his attention.
The son of prominent Little Stratford citizen Dr. Austin Monaghan was discovered murdered in the family estate two days ago, September 6th. The body was found by a maid in the household, said to be grisly scene as police investigated the home, which stands on the hilltop above town. Dr. Monaghan's youngest son Dominic had been following
The article was cut off by the paper’s edge. Billy groped feverishly through the rest of his papers, sure he had copied out more, but he found nothing that fit together with this tiny bit of information.
"Dominic," Billy said the name out loud, and all the lights he had flipped on from the entryway to the parlor dimmed with a massive surge of energy. The breath was nearly taken from Billy's chest as he witnessed, for the first time in his life, a full-bodied apparition.
He was faded, transparent, but paced the floor before the chair across the parlor. The clothing he wore made him appear half dressed, with a billowy white shirt undone down the front half-placket of buttons, haphazardly tucked in. Braces swung loose at his hips from dark trousers, and he wore no shoes or socks. His face was that of a man, a young man with wild hair and a crooked mouth, and the eyes… Billy feared to blink under their intensity, the distrust and desperation with which he was studied.
The apparition slowly disintegrated into a smoky mist, even as it seemed to grow more agitated, and was gone. The lights grew back to their usual brightness, and Billy swallowed and mopped the sweat from his brow. He didn't want to admit it to this entity or anyone else, but in that moment he'd been utterly terrified.
"All right," he whispered, hauling himself from the rug with popping knees and collapsing back into the armchair. "Dominic. So, that's you, then? You were… you were murdered in this house. One… shite… one hundred and twenty years ago."
He glanced back at the story and laughed abruptly, "You're not going to tell me you were offed by Jack the Ripper, are you? He only went for whores, I thought."
The back of his chair thumped as if someone had kicked it hard from behind. "Jesus, mate, it was a joke. And anyway, that’s a fair ride away from here by horse, London is, that’s pretty unlikely."
He scanned the Ripper article, which also cut off at the bottom of several paragraphs, though the information was familiar. "Do you know people are still trying to solve that case, even now? There have been books and films…. Did you see that last one with Johnny Depp? That was…"
The lamp beside him rose from the table and smashed to the floor.
"Shite!" Billy yelled, angry now as he knelt to gather the pieces. "For fuck's sake, Dominic, don't you get that I'm not the bloody bad guy? I'll have to pay for this thing now! If it was antique Tiffany or summat worth more than my sorry life you and I can share lodgings for the rest of our pathetic existence - ah, fuckingarsingcunting hell!"
A piece of colored glass insinuated itself deep into his finger, drawing blood that looked purple in the dim light glowing in from the hall. When he yanked out the offending shard, it pulsed and throbbed. He whinged and stuck it in his mouth, sucking on the pain.
A sadistic, high-voiced chuckle rang out to his right, clear as a human voice in the room.
"Fuck you, then, if it's funny," Billy growled, squeezing his finger. He stumbled out to his van, finding the first aid kit he kept under the seat, then had to pause and wrestle with the stupid door that had locked him out again, and started up the stairs once back inside the house.
Right on cue, he found his way hedged by that anxious thick air, and an enraged hiss as he continued on from the landing. He groped for the light switch and then thought the better of it, remembering what had happened up here before. "Dominic, I'm just going to the loo to clean this cut. Can't you lay off your act for this once? Or at the very least be a gentleman's son and show me where it is."
The doors slammed one by one up the hallway, right up to the first door on the right from the stairway that remained open. Inside, its light came on by itself.
Billy cocked his head curiously and started slowly forward to the lit doorway, finding a spacious bathroom with brass fixtures, a chaise and a massive claw-footed bathtub. This had been clearly a later addition to the house, a room converted to accommodate the changing times and the luxury of indoor plumbing. The toilet hidden in a small alcove dated much later, Sixties or Seventies if Billy’s personal expertise in toilets said anything. That it was mustard yellow to match the far older wallpaper was a dead giveaway.
"Thank you, Dom," he smiled quietly. "They don't make them like this anymore. The one in my flat is about the size of a broom cupboard. I can piss in the toilet without even stepping out of the shower."
He looked up in the mirror as he rinsed the blood from his finger under a faucet that coughed and sputtered before it ran blessedly clear and cold. An oriental screen blocked half the tub from the door and a large vase of dead, dry flowers sat on a table behind him. The flowers on one side seemed to shudder in the reflection, and several fragile petals fell and crumbled to dust where they landed. A prickle went up Bill’s spine just knowing this ghost was watching every move he made.
"May I call you Dom? I don't know which you'd prefer. I'm Billy, by the way. It’s William, really, but Billy's what I go by."
He heard a tap from below him, and stepping back to open the cabinet door, he found the cupboard stocked with toilet paper, shaving cream and other essentials. Apparently Mr. Holm and his family must have had some plans of staying. Such modern manufactured things seemed completely out of place in a house haunted by a nineteenth century ghost. He chuckled. "Thank you Dom. Dominic. Which one? Can you tell me? Tap once for Dom and twice for Dominic."
He waited, and heard three distinct successive taps. "How very avante garde, young Monaghan. I think you're just arsing me around now." He fastened a bandage around the cut on his finger, and threw the paper in the bin.
"I'm not leaving any time soon, Dominic, so you and I might as well get to know each other. Dom or Dominic? One or two?"
Silence followed. Billy sighed and exited the bathroom, turning off the light. He glanced down the hall to the rest of the upper floor, feeling the air go stagnant even as he did it. He felt a tug on his clothes on the side closest to the stairs, and a not-so-gentle push from the other side. "All right, I get it."
Back in the parlor, he looked at the remains of the lamp and his piled research, the voice recorder still blinking its red recording light. He sat down and picked up the recorder, wondering if he was going to get anywhere with this.
"Dom? I like Dom, you know. It's short and easy. Friendly, even. You've hardly been Casper though." He held out the recorder, "This thing is like… sort of like a gramophone. I suppose that would have been the newest cool invention when you were a lad. It records sounds and plays them back, like my voice talking right now. Understand? Listen."
Billy rewound the feed a few seconds and played it back, repeating his last few sentences loud and clear, before he stopped it again, hit record and looked around the room, hoping for confirmation that Dominic was listening. “Can you speak into this machine, Dom? Can you tell me why you’re here?”
He waited, ran the feed back, but there was no sound but his own voice.
“Maybe I should tell you why I’m here, then?” Billy asked, then sighed, thinking. "My parents died when I was a boy, and my gran raised my sister and me. And I didn't… I didn't believe in any sort of afterlife or limbo or whatever, back then. Not until the night Mum came back."
He laughed nervously at the absurdity of telling something so personal to this strange entity, this ghost of a murdered lad of privilege from the Victorian days. It wasn’t his usual method, but he didn’t want another physical attack of the sort provoking could earn him. But now the house was dead silent, almost straining towards him, and he felt as though he had its undivided attention.
"I was twenty, the first time, and I was completely pissed. I'd been down the pub half the night and got dragged home by a mate, and I felt like death warmed over, you'll excuse the expression. But I felt… as I was being sick, it felt the way it did when I had the flu as a boy. Mum, rubbing my back, helping me get back to my bed after.
"The second time she came, she scared me so badly I ran off and stayed on Maggie's sofa for days. 'Course Maggie's my sister, so Mum would turn up there as well." Billy shook his head at the memory, turning the recorder over in his fingers. "Anyway, I first recorded her voice with one of these. Mum’s voice, ten years after she had died. I couldn't hear it when she said it, but when I played it back, it was there. I guess maybe its easier, you don't have to pull so much energy for me to hear it. That's what I want to try to do with you, aye? Can you say something, Dominic? Can you speak into this recorder for me?"
Billy swallowed, holding his breath as the grandfather clock ticked several seconds away. He counted to thirty and then impatiently rewound the recording and turned the volume up high.
"- what I want to try to do with you, aye? Can you say something, Dominic? Can you speak into this recorder for me?"
"...What did she say… Billy?"
CHAPTER FOUR
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.
Mustard from the fast food burger dripped down his palm while he read a few pages of what he’d collected in the library. By late afternoon he had a folder full of stories copied out, anything he thought could be connected.
He'd spent a long and sleepless night in a motel just inside of town. Truthfully, he was excited. This was possibly the most phenomenal case he'd had, and he'd barely even begun. Ghost-hunting was a hobby, an obsession, really; a bid to understand things that couldn't be explained. But more often than not it was disappointing. This was something else. This was absolutely the real McCoy, and the dull sting on his back was proof.
He jumped from his reverie as his mobile rang, absently wiping his hand down his shirt to answer.
"Hullo?"
"You didn't listen."
Billy sighed, "No, Cate, I'm afraid not."
She echoed his sigh, but said nothing else.
"What? You have a bad feeling again? Are your ears twitching?"
"Billy," She warned, though her tone was gentle. "He has so much hatred. He's angry you’re there."
"I figured that part out all by my onesies, hen,” Billy ignored her concern, "You should see the state of my back."
"And you should see the state of mine," she returned hotly.
Billy boggled a little. "You… you can’t be serious. That's not even physically poss-"
"You understand very little about possibility, Billy," she retorted.
Billy sighed once again, shaking his head. "Cate, you know I don't understand your… connection to me, or whatever it is. But I'm all right with this. Truly. I think I might have something on this one."
"I don't expect you to trust me. You're always a skeptic first," she spoke with a quiet resignation. "You must be careful, Billy. With yourself. With him. He is more powerful than you know."
Billy stared blankly at the pages before him. "He's a ghost, Cate. That's all he is."
The phone clicked, and went to dial tone.
*
The lock stuck firmly against the key, and would not give until he heaved the knob upwards while turning, but eventually he was granted entry.
The time had long run out in his cameras. He replaced batteries and video cards in all three and then found a place to read, flicking on the lamp on a table in the parlor while dusk began to settle in. From his pocket he withdrew a digital voice recorder, hit the button to record and set it carefully upright on the table beside him, then got cozy in a dusty armchair with his findings on his lap.
He sat for a good ten minutes reading before the voice recorder beside him fell over. It was exactly the signal he'd been waiting for.
"I've been out reading today, at the libraries and town hall," he spoke to the house, unconcerned at an inanimate object moving of its own accord. "It's really amazing, the sort of records that are kept throughout history. I went through all sorts of certificates, property deeds, bank records, newspapers… you name it, some bloke kept it for whatever reason."
There was no response, so he continued, "Milton Keynes. Do you know, I never knew this shite before. Started up in the sixties, with all that ultra modern minimalist architecture and the hippies and the peace movement and all that. It’s probably all the Beatles fault, this. I was just a babe in Glasgow when it started up here. People have lived here for centuries before though, in the little villages. Haversham, Linford, Stratford. They’re more like suburbs nowadays. I wonder when you lived here."
The table lamp turned itself off, throwing the parlor into only what light sunset was pulled in through the windows. Billy calmly turned it back on and flipped to other pages. "See, according to the deeds I found, this house was built in 1874, owned by a physician by the name of Monaghan."
Billy felt the air temperature physically drop around his knees by at least ten degrees or more. "Is Monaghan your name?"
He got no answer and flipped through more copies. "Monaghan had apparently managed to work his way up in society. I imagine he must have done well for himself to be able to build up an estate like this, must have had ties to people high up. Doctors weren't generally land owners in those days, were they? Certainly not a place like this. No, they were middle class in Victoria’s day. Most of them worked off the back of a horse making house calls."
The cold spot spread throughout the room. Billy leaned forward, trying to feel how far it went. "Are you this… Dr. Monaghan?"
It felt very much as if he was being watched from all sides, but nothing happened and he sighed, reading through the various documents and wondering if he was even on the right track. He rewound the recorder and turned it up, but there were no sounds around or between his own voice.
In shuffling through the piles of copy, several of the papers slipped from his knees and whispered to the floor. He knelt to pick them up from the dusty rug, his hands reaching out for the pages that had gone the farthest.
A most unnatural sound issued all around, loud and yet not, sending a fierce chill sweeping through him. It was as if someone was standing over him and screaming, only the sound came from inside his own head. He scrambled for the paper on the rug, but it stuck down like it was glued, and that horrible sound continued so close and heavy…
Suddenly a freezing grasp had him by the face, like cold dead hands on his cheek, on the back of his head, forcing his nose down, down to the floor, to the paper beneath his face. With a shriek the sound cut off he was suddenly released, his own instinct to fight throwing him over backwards.
Billy fell hard on his backside, gasping for breath, the paper crumpled in his fingers. He stared around, trying to place the attacker, but of course no one was there. "Christ," he heaved, still panting as he climbed to his knees, "Really mate, I bloody well know you're here, you don't have to go all Linda Blair on me, all right?"
He smoothed out the paper in his fingers and tilted it towards the light. It was a copy of an old local newspaper that he didn't recall looking at. Three quarters of the way through his research, he'd downed multiple coffees and made copies of practically anything with bleary-eyed indiscretion, so that he didn't remember this article was no surprise. It dated to 1888, and detailed the infamous Jack The Ripper murders under a big headline. This seemed to be the second of them, the prostitute by the name of Dark Annie.
"Mate, you're not going to tell me…" Billy laughed in disbelief where he knelt on the carpet. Whitechapel was a far cry from Milton Keynes, there was no way… but then a smaller article off to the right of the main story caught his attention.
The son of prominent Little Stratford citizen Dr. Austin Monaghan was discovered murdered in the family estate two days ago, September 6th. The body was found by a maid in the household, said to be grisly scene as police investigated the home, which stands on the hilltop above town. Dr. Monaghan's youngest son Dominic had been following
The article was cut off by the paper’s edge. Billy groped feverishly through the rest of his papers, sure he had copied out more, but he found nothing that fit together with this tiny bit of information.
"Dominic," Billy said the name out loud, and all the lights he had flipped on from the entryway to the parlor dimmed with a massive surge of energy. The breath was nearly taken from Billy's chest as he witnessed, for the first time in his life, a full-bodied apparition.
He was faded, transparent, but paced the floor before the chair across the parlor. The clothing he wore made him appear half dressed, with a billowy white shirt undone down the front half-placket of buttons, haphazardly tucked in. Braces swung loose at his hips from dark trousers, and he wore no shoes or socks. His face was that of a man, a young man with wild hair and a crooked mouth, and the eyes… Billy feared to blink under their intensity, the distrust and desperation with which he was studied.
The apparition slowly disintegrated into a smoky mist, even as it seemed to grow more agitated, and was gone. The lights grew back to their usual brightness, and Billy swallowed and mopped the sweat from his brow. He didn't want to admit it to this entity or anyone else, but in that moment he'd been utterly terrified.
"All right," he whispered, hauling himself from the rug with popping knees and collapsing back into the armchair. "Dominic. So, that's you, then? You were… you were murdered in this house. One… shite… one hundred and twenty years ago."
He glanced back at the story and laughed abruptly, "You're not going to tell me you were offed by Jack the Ripper, are you? He only went for whores, I thought."
The back of his chair thumped as if someone had kicked it hard from behind. "Jesus, mate, it was a joke. And anyway, that’s a fair ride away from here by horse, London is, that’s pretty unlikely."
He scanned the Ripper article, which also cut off at the bottom of several paragraphs, though the information was familiar. "Do you know people are still trying to solve that case, even now? There have been books and films…. Did you see that last one with Johnny Depp? That was…"
The lamp beside him rose from the table and smashed to the floor.
"Shite!" Billy yelled, angry now as he knelt to gather the pieces. "For fuck's sake, Dominic, don't you get that I'm not the bloody bad guy? I'll have to pay for this thing now! If it was antique Tiffany or summat worth more than my sorry life you and I can share lodgings for the rest of our pathetic existence - ah, fuckingarsingcunting hell!"
A piece of colored glass insinuated itself deep into his finger, drawing blood that looked purple in the dim light glowing in from the hall. When he yanked out the offending shard, it pulsed and throbbed. He whinged and stuck it in his mouth, sucking on the pain.
A sadistic, high-voiced chuckle rang out to his right, clear as a human voice in the room.
"Fuck you, then, if it's funny," Billy growled, squeezing his finger. He stumbled out to his van, finding the first aid kit he kept under the seat, then had to pause and wrestle with the stupid door that had locked him out again, and started up the stairs once back inside the house.
Right on cue, he found his way hedged by that anxious thick air, and an enraged hiss as he continued on from the landing. He groped for the light switch and then thought the better of it, remembering what had happened up here before. "Dominic, I'm just going to the loo to clean this cut. Can't you lay off your act for this once? Or at the very least be a gentleman's son and show me where it is."
The doors slammed one by one up the hallway, right up to the first door on the right from the stairway that remained open. Inside, its light came on by itself.
Billy cocked his head curiously and started slowly forward to the lit doorway, finding a spacious bathroom with brass fixtures, a chaise and a massive claw-footed bathtub. This had been clearly a later addition to the house, a room converted to accommodate the changing times and the luxury of indoor plumbing. The toilet hidden in a small alcove dated much later, Sixties or Seventies if Billy’s personal expertise in toilets said anything. That it was mustard yellow to match the far older wallpaper was a dead giveaway.
"Thank you, Dom," he smiled quietly. "They don't make them like this anymore. The one in my flat is about the size of a broom cupboard. I can piss in the toilet without even stepping out of the shower."
He looked up in the mirror as he rinsed the blood from his finger under a faucet that coughed and sputtered before it ran blessedly clear and cold. An oriental screen blocked half the tub from the door and a large vase of dead, dry flowers sat on a table behind him. The flowers on one side seemed to shudder in the reflection, and several fragile petals fell and crumbled to dust where they landed. A prickle went up Bill’s spine just knowing this ghost was watching every move he made.
"May I call you Dom? I don't know which you'd prefer. I'm Billy, by the way. It’s William, really, but Billy's what I go by."
He heard a tap from below him, and stepping back to open the cabinet door, he found the cupboard stocked with toilet paper, shaving cream and other essentials. Apparently Mr. Holm and his family must have had some plans of staying. Such modern manufactured things seemed completely out of place in a house haunted by a nineteenth century ghost. He chuckled. "Thank you Dom. Dominic. Which one? Can you tell me? Tap once for Dom and twice for Dominic."
He waited, and heard three distinct successive taps. "How very avante garde, young Monaghan. I think you're just arsing me around now." He fastened a bandage around the cut on his finger, and threw the paper in the bin.
"I'm not leaving any time soon, Dominic, so you and I might as well get to know each other. Dom or Dominic? One or two?"
Silence followed. Billy sighed and exited the bathroom, turning off the light. He glanced down the hall to the rest of the upper floor, feeling the air go stagnant even as he did it. He felt a tug on his clothes on the side closest to the stairs, and a not-so-gentle push from the other side. "All right, I get it."
Back in the parlor, he looked at the remains of the lamp and his piled research, the voice recorder still blinking its red recording light. He sat down and picked up the recorder, wondering if he was going to get anywhere with this.
"Dom? I like Dom, you know. It's short and easy. Friendly, even. You've hardly been Casper though." He held out the recorder, "This thing is like… sort of like a gramophone. I suppose that would have been the newest cool invention when you were a lad. It records sounds and plays them back, like my voice talking right now. Understand? Listen."
Billy rewound the feed a few seconds and played it back, repeating his last few sentences loud and clear, before he stopped it again, hit record and looked around the room, hoping for confirmation that Dominic was listening. “Can you speak into this machine, Dom? Can you tell me why you’re here?”
He waited, ran the feed back, but there was no sound but his own voice.
“Maybe I should tell you why I’m here, then?” Billy asked, then sighed, thinking. "My parents died when I was a boy, and my gran raised my sister and me. And I didn't… I didn't believe in any sort of afterlife or limbo or whatever, back then. Not until the night Mum came back."
He laughed nervously at the absurdity of telling something so personal to this strange entity, this ghost of a murdered lad of privilege from the Victorian days. It wasn’t his usual method, but he didn’t want another physical attack of the sort provoking could earn him. But now the house was dead silent, almost straining towards him, and he felt as though he had its undivided attention.
"I was twenty, the first time, and I was completely pissed. I'd been down the pub half the night and got dragged home by a mate, and I felt like death warmed over, you'll excuse the expression. But I felt… as I was being sick, it felt the way it did when I had the flu as a boy. Mum, rubbing my back, helping me get back to my bed after.
"The second time she came, she scared me so badly I ran off and stayed on Maggie's sofa for days. 'Course Maggie's my sister, so Mum would turn up there as well." Billy shook his head at the memory, turning the recorder over in his fingers. "Anyway, I first recorded her voice with one of these. Mum’s voice, ten years after she had died. I couldn't hear it when she said it, but when I played it back, it was there. I guess maybe its easier, you don't have to pull so much energy for me to hear it. That's what I want to try to do with you, aye? Can you say something, Dominic? Can you speak into this recorder for me?"
Billy swallowed, holding his breath as the grandfather clock ticked several seconds away. He counted to thirty and then impatiently rewound the recording and turned the volume up high.
"- what I want to try to do with you, aye? Can you say something, Dominic? Can you speak into this recorder for me?"
"...What did she say… Billy?"
CHAPTER FOUR