Dark Little Wonders and Other Stories Read online

  “It doesn't have to be a big thing,” she said. “Forget all about it.”

  He sighed again.

  “So I'll go and get my coat, then,” she told him, “and we can head off.”

  She waited, but he didn't reply. Figuring that she was just talking into a void, she turned to go back to the hallway.

  “There's always one thing,” he said suddenly.

  She stopped and glanced back at him, over her shoulder.

  “There's always one stupid little thing that goes wrong,” he continued, and now he'd begun to bow his head, and his shoulders were a little rounded. “What is it with this place? What is it with me? How can I never, ever get all the details right?”

  “Jonathan -”

  “And it is the details!” he snapped, turning to her. “That's the most irritating thing! It's the teeniest, tiniest details. It's the things that no-one ever thinks about until it's too late. That's what always trips me up!”

  “I...”

  Camilla paused, still trying to figure out what he meant.

  “I'll get my coat, then,” she stammered finally. “The weather said it might -”

  “If even a half-wit like you can't be fooled,” he continued, “then how can I ever hope to get past someone who has more than a couple of brain cells to rub together?”

  “I'm sorry?”

  She paused, before furrowing her brow.

  “That didn't sound very nice,” she said finally, cautiously. “I mean, I know I'm not exactly book-smart, but...”

  Her voice trailed off.

  “I thought this time, normal would be the key,” he said, with a hint of desperation in his voice. “You know? Go somewhere completely normal, completely mundane. Somewhere boring. Find a boring, average person and test it all out on her. Go slow and steady after all the screw-ups before. Shouldn't that have been easy? Shouldn't it have been simple? Really, tell me. Am I losing my mind here, or shouldn't that have worked?”

  He paused.

  Camilla waited.

  “Well,” she said finally, “maybe -”

  Suddenly Jonathan turned and punched one of the cabinets above the sink, sending his fist crashing straight through the wood in a startling outburst of violence that sent Camilla stepping back until she bumped against the wall.

  “I just need a break,” Jonathan said as he pulled his fist out from the hole. There was blood around his wrist, and he held his hand up to show Camilla. “I managed this!” he continued. “I managed to bleed! How did it not occur to me that I'd also have to do something so mundane as peeing and pooping!”

  “I don't think I understand,” Camilla replied, fearful now as she realized she'd unlocked a whole other side of Jonathan.

  “Of course you don't,” he muttered, his voice dripping with disdain as blood dripped from his hand and hit the floor. “How could you? You're a cretin. That was the whole point. Start at the bottom and work my way up.” Sighing, he put his hands against one of the other counter tops. “I guess I was complacent,” he continued. “You know? I was cocky, overconfident. I warned myself against that. The others warned me! I told myself I was going to be careful, but I just couldn't take you seriously.” He glanced at her and, for a moment, he stared with an expression of pure contempt. “I suppose,” he added coldly, “even a complete idiot can occasionally notice when things aren't right. Especially something as mundane as going to the toilet.”

  “Why are you saying these things?” she asked, shocked by his outburst. Jonathan was usually so calm, so loving, so kind. In all the time they'd been together, he'd never said one mean thing. “Jonathan, I don't know what you're talking about.”

  “Well, it's done now,” he said, sounding exhausted. “Another failure. Back to square one I go.”

  “Square one?” She hesitated, and now she could feel a flicker of genuine fear in her chest. There were tears, too, welling in her eyes. “Jonathan,” she continued finally, “we can work through this. If you can just forgive me for being so paranoid, I -”

  “Forgive you?” He paused, and then he let out a short, abrupt laugh. “I don't need to forgive you, Camilla. I should thank you. You've opened my eyes to something I should have realized long ago. After thousands and thousands of years, I still have things to learn.” He closed his eyes. “Even if they happen to be such ridiculously small things.”

  Camilla tried to think of something to say, but nothing came into her mind. Instead she merely stared at Jonathan and waited – hoped – for some kind of miracle to rescue the situation. The only thoughts that finally entered her head were simple, plaintive cries of regret.

  Why couldn't I have just kept my mouth shut?

  Why did I have to ruin everything?

  “I think I'm going to go for a walk,” Camilla said finally, keen to defuse the situation. Perhaps, if she got some air for a while, she might return and find that everything had gone right back to normal. “By myself, just to clear my head. Is that okay? And then when I get back, we can talk. I think we need to talk.”

  She waited.

  Nothing.

  No response at all.

  Had he not heard? Or, worse, did he no longer care? Camilla couldn't shake the feeling that she'd overreacted and created a crisis out of nothing. Sure, Jonathan had said some mean things, but hadn't that been her fault for pushing him and being so paranoid? She wanted desperately to turn the clock back, but she knew it was too late for that. Still, she hoped that if he had time to cool off, he might stop being so angry.

  “I'll be a few hours,” she said softly, turning and heading back out of the kitchen.

  With each step, she wanted to turn and run back inside, to beg Jonathan to forgive her. All her life, she'd irritated everyone around her. She'd tried to be funny and interesting, but finally she'd accepted that she was just normal. She did normal things, she had normal thoughts, and she led a normal life. Any time she ventured out of that safety zone – by, for example, having weird thoughts and then accusing the love of her life of never going to the bathroom – everything always went wrong. She could only hope, as she opened the door and stepped out into the hallway, that Jonathan would forgive her, and that she'd learn her lesson.

  “I underestimated you so much,” Jonathan said suddenly.

  Camilla stopped, realizing that he was right behind her. She began to turn to face him, but at the last moment some deep subconscious voice told her not to.

  “From the first time I saw you, I thought you were so simple,” Jonathan continued, “but look at you. Even the dumbest of you has some kind of redeeming quality.”

  Is he talking about me?

  She wasn't sure.

  It sounds almost as if he's talking about everyone.

  She opened her mouth to ask exactly what he meant, but instead she was distracted by a strange sizzling sensation that seemed to be fizzing and bubbling all across her shoulders and the back of her neck. The sensation was so strange, but she told herself that it would end soon, yet – if anything – the sensation seemed to be getting stronger.

  “How could something so primitive come to prove so fascinating?” Jonathan asked. “When I saw the first of you in that garden, I laughed. I wondered how anyone could ever expect you to survive. But you did more than survive, didn't you? You thrived. And now, look, there are billions upon billions of you all. Even your dullest specimens are able to notice my little mistakes. That's the biggest surprise of all. The fact that I find all of you, even ones like you, to be so very interesting. I fear it's going to take a good while longer before I'm able to convincingly walk among you.”

  She half-turned, but now her back felt hot, and she still couldn't bring herself to actually look at Jonathan. It was as if an invisible force was forcing her – begging her – to turn away.

  “How many more will it take?” Jonathan asked, as he slowly placed a hand on her right shoulder. “A hundred? A thousand? More? Still, I must keep studying you humans, so that one day I can pass as one of you.
For it's only when I finally pass among you unnoticed, that I shall be able to tear you all apart and pull your entire world crashing down into Hell.”

  Slowly, trembling with fear – and with the back of her neck really starting to burn now – Camilla turned to look at him.

  Camilla Ludgrave had always lived a fairly normal sort of life, and she'd known that. She'd been a normal student at school, and then she'd gone and got a normal job. She'd worn normal clothes that didn't attract attention, and she'd used just a normal amount of make-up. She'd read normal books and watched normal films, and anything that didn't feel normal had always made her feel uncomfortable. She would have happily admitted that, right up until her final moments, she'd been a very normal person indeed. Right at the end of her life, however, she'd done something that wasn't normal. She'd screamed a scream that was more powerful, more horrendous, more horrified than almost any in human history.

  Because in her final seconds, just before she died, Camilla Ludgrave had been one of the very few people to ever see the true face of the Devil himself.

  The Ghost of Creele Abbey

  Jake

  “Wait! I thought you said we were going ghost-hunting tonight?”

  “We are.”

  “Then what are we doing here?”

  Stopping at the bottom of the slope, I look at the ruined abbey as it stands silhouetted against a backdrop of stars. We're more than ten miles from town, so there's not a street-light in sight; instead the huge, partially collapsed Creele Abbey stands in complete darkness, visible only due to the patches of starlight its crumbling walls block from view. There appear to be five main sections of stonework rising high against the night sky, like fingers of a giant hand that might at any moment close around us if we dare get too close.

  “I thought we were going to the abandoned church in Deilham, or to that old asylum at Crafter's End.” I pause for a moment to zip my coat shut as a strong breeze blows across the valley. “You know, places that are actually supposed to be haunted. There are no ghost stories about Creele Abbey.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Huh?”

  A few paces ahead of me, Dylan stops and turns, holding his phone up so that I can see the pinprick light on the front.

  “If you listen to the stories,” he continues, “the abandoned church in Deilham is supposed to be haunted by a gray lady who chases people. It's said that if you dare cross the threshold at night, she comes shrieking from the basement, trying to drag people down so she can do all kinds of terrible things to them.”

  “I know the legend of Deilham church,” I reply. “Everyone knows it.”

  “And at the old asylum, it's said that dead inmates still walk the corridors at night, waiting to kill anyone who's foolish enough to go exploring. It's said that the moans of the dead can still be heard at night sometimes. There are even rumors of a mad, dead doctor who's after fresh patients for his experiments. He takes people to his lab and does awful things to them.”

  Reaching into my pocket, I take out the print-outs I brought along tonight. I thought we were going to the asylum, so I printed out information from tons of websites. That way, we don't have to worry about paying for data on our phones. I'm good at thinking ahead.

  “Exactly,” I say, holding the print-outs up for him to see. “So shouldn't we be ghost-hunting at one of those places tonight? At the asylum, maybe?”

  He sighs. “Use your head, Jake. If there's really a gray lady at Deilham, then how come people escape and tell stories about her? Either she's a rubbish chaser, or it's just a load of baloney. The same goes for that asylum. If the insane dead doctor drags people down into his laboratory to continues his work, then where do the stories come from? If something like that were real, nobody'd ever escape to tell anyone. And if they did, the cops'd be all over that place.”

  “So what you're saying is...”

  “There are no ghost stories about Creele Abbey,” he continues, turning and looking up at the ruined walls that rise high above us, blocking out hundreds of stars. “Not one. So the way I see it, that means one of two things. Either there's just nothing here, or...”

  His voice trails off for a moment.

  “Or,” I continue, as I start to understand his reasoning, “maybe whatever's here, nobody ever gets to leave and tell stories about it.”

  He turns to me with a glint in his eye. “Bingo!”

  ***

  “Creele Abbey used to be a proper monastery,” Dylan explains a few minutes later, once we've made our way through the arched entrance and into what I guess must have been the main part of the building. “The place was filled with monks. Loads of 'em, living out here way past the edge of town and getting on with, I dunno, whatever monks do with their time. Minding their own business, I suppose. Until the place burned down in 1750, killing everyone who lived here.”

  “You've done your research,” I mutter, turning and shining my flashlight over toward what remains of a nearby wall. Looking up, I see the stars high above. I guess the fire must have destroyed the roof.

  “It was rumored at the time that one of the monks had lost his mind and started worshiping Satan, or something like that. Obviously the other monks wouldn't have liked that, so I guess there was a bit of an argument. They probably thought he was a heretic, they were probably gonna throw him out. And then boosh, one night people in town saw flames on the horizon, and by the time they got here the whole place was just an inferno. They reckon they pulled twenty or thirty charred bodies from the ruins.”

  “Didn't anyone try to rebuild?” I ask. “Or maybe -”

  Suddenly I stumble against some stones on the ground. I almost fall, but I just about manage to stay on my feet. There's so much junk scattered about the place, mostly hidden by the long grass that has been left untended. It's definitely not hard to believe that Creele Abbey has been left completely abandoned for decades, perhaps even centuries.

  “Who'd want to rebuild a place like this?” Dylan asks, turning and looking around, using the night-vision app on his phone to get a better view of the ruins. “If you think about it, it's a perfect haunting location. You've got creepy monks, you've got a madman who worshiped Satan, you've got a fire that killed everyone. I mean, seriously, it'd be a miracle if there weren't ghosts here.” He turns to me, aiming the phone's camera straight at my face. “Except there aren't. Or at least, there are no ghost stories about the place.”

  “So why are we here?”

  “What's wrong? Still sour that we're not at the abandoned asylum?”

  “Donna Murphy said she went to the asylum with her friends last year and they heard a mysterious coughing sound.” Reaching into my pocket, I take out the printed pages again. “I know the exact spot where you're supposed to stand if you want to hear the cries of the dead victims. The exact spot, Dylan! We could be there right now!”

  He starts laughing.

  “It's all true!” I continue. “Donna said that when they went there one night, they heard someone coughing in one of the rooms, but they couldn't find who it was. Then later they felt like they were being watched, and then they heard footsteps and they ran. Donna swears it was the mad doctor, come to drag them down to his laboratory and perform experiments. I mean, she really swears. On her life and everything!”

  “That's such a weak story.”

  “They heard someone chasing them! They're not the only ones, either. If you go online, you can read about loads of people who reckon they've been to Crafter's End and were chased away by ghosts.”

  “Well, you can go to the asylum if you want,” he replies, “but I'm staying at Creele Abbey for the night.” He turns and holds his phone up, and I can just about make out the screen's green glow. “Sure, maybe there's nothing here. Or maybe, just maybe, there's something here and no-one has ever lived to tell about it. I don't know about you, but I'm more interested in that, than in a ghost that apparently chases people but never catches them.”

  Stepping up behind him, I squin
t as I peer at his phone's screen. The night-vision app shows a glowing green image of the farthest wall, where there's what looks like an open doorway set into the stone. Dylan's hands aren't very steady, so the picture's jumping all the time, but I can just about make out what looks like a stone altar near the doorway, and I've got to admit that the sight gives me the creeps. Not that I'm going to tell that to Dylan, of course. He'd love it if he knew I was scared, and I refuse to give him that satisfaction. Just because he's fifteen and I'm only fourteen, that doesn't mean he's more grown-up than me.

  “Come on,” he says suddenly, setting off toward the doorway. “I wanna go in there.”

  “Why?”

  “Why do you think? We came here to search for ghosts, didn't we?”

  “Yeah, but -”

  “So let's search for ghosts.”

  “Yeah, but it's cold!”

  “Are you scared?”

  “No!”

  “Yeah, you are. You're such a little kid, Jake.”

  “I'm not a little kid! I'm only a year younger than you!”

  “Yeah, and it shows. It's okay, if you want to wait outside like a scared little wuss, that's fine. I'll be out when I've taken a look around.”

  Sighing, I realize he's already too far ahead. There's no way he's going to turn back, so I hesitate for a moment before carefully making my way after him, taking care not to trip over any more stones. I can't walk nearly as fast as he's managing, so by the time I reach the old stone altar Dylan is already all the way over at the doorway. Stopping for a moment, I shine my flashlight at the top of the altar, but all I see is a bare stone surface with several cracks and some kind of dark stain. Reaching out, I run a hand across the stain, which turns out to be dry. There's a lot of dust on the altar, and when I look at my hand I see a fine layer of powder covering my palm and fingers.

  “Gross,” I mutter, wiping my hand clean on the side of my jeans.

  “Over here!” Dylan calls out.

  I turn and shine my flashlight toward him, just in time to see him ducking down and making his way through the crumbled arch.