The Black Beacon Book of Ghosts will send shivers up your spine this Halloween. The Kindle version is already available for
pre-order at just $1.99 instead of $3.99 and you can add the anthology to your
Goodreads "want to read" list today. The anthology will be officially released on the 11th of October 2024. To get you in the mood and give you a little insight into the workings of their minds, our contributing authors are sharing their own haunting experiences with you. Read on, if you're not fainthearted!
Something may or may not have happened years ago. I put it into a short story, my most autobiographical ever, more or less unchanged (including that my best friend also heard the noise and we both stood in the middle of the night right where it was coming from without quite daring to reach out and put a hand in the middle of it). If there hadn’t been a witness, I would have long ago discounted the whole thing. In the story the house’s name was given as Prospect House. That wasn’t – isn’t – its true name. The illustration shows the real house as it was back then. Later owners have changed it irrevocably and removed an unforgivable amount of its historical features.
It was two o’clock in the morning and he was happily reading in bed. His was the only light in the house. Immersed in the book, he became practically oblivious to what surrounded him, automatically shutting out the sounds of a large house settling down (the first night there he’d hardly been able to believe the cacophony of creaks and groans that it made).
That was why it took so long for him to notice the breathing.
It crept up on him subliminally. When he did become aware of the sound he realised that it had actually commenced some time before, but just below the level of his consciousness. His stomach turned to chill water. For a second he entertained the childish idea of pretending that nothing was there, in the hope it would just go away.
But there was. And it wouldn’t. He had to investigate. He rose from bed, not bothering even to put on his robe or slippers, and went out onto the landing. The noise was from below. He looked down. Nothing.
For a few seconds he paused outside Margaret’s room and listened to her sleeping. It clearly wasn’t her making the noise. Her breaths were quieter, shorter, female. And right next to him. These were longer, louder and male. When he held his own breath they continued. He leaned out over the bannister. They came from right below him. The downstairs hall, where the stairs gave a 90 degree turn, creating a small parqueted square of floor. A space that was empty.
Gingerly he descended, keeping his steps quiet, even though he didn’t need to: the sound continued, irrespective.
It was localised. It was from that spot. Where there was nothing to create it. He did all the sensible things, of course: checked that all the windows and taps were closed, even though no water pipes ran anywhere near it; put his hand to the cold metal of the boiler, despite knowing the heating was off; armed himself with a poker and inspected every room for burglars; then went once more to listen to Margaret in case some weird echo was at play. But that was pointless too. The breathing was completely different from hers. And clearly coming from that specific spot on the ground floor.
In the end there was nothing to do. He went back to bed. He turned out the light and tried to sleep, but the noise was more frightening in darkness. Exhausted, he sat back up and took up his book. Somewhere around four o’clock he became aware the noise had ceased. He slept.
The following night, Adam once again found himself awake at two AM. He hadn’t expected the sound to begin again. But it did. He repeated the same pointless actions. It continued, regardless. He returned to the landing and looked down at the space that contained it. Nothing. No one. He could think of nothing to do that would make any sense. In time he returned to bed. In time, he was able to sleep.
By the third night familiarity had deprived it of its ability to scare him. There was also something inherently unthreatening about it. He tried to analyse it. The breathing seemed to be a man’s: even, not unnaturally loud, undramatic. It wasn’t the gasping of someone dying, as he had at first feared. He wasn’t, he felt, witnessing a recording of murder or terminal illness.
The next weekend Tracey and Mark came over, and stayed up so late talking that they both accepted the offer to stay the night. Not unintentionally, Adam kept the fireside reminiscences going long after their wives had retired. In the small hours, the noise began. Would Mark hear it?
He did, and his reaction was similar to Adam’s: an exploration of logical causes. And then illogical ones. The idea that that highly polished patch of floor was haunted was ridiculous. It was true that they were directly below a bannister rail from which someone could have hanged themselves, but such an event was clearly not what they were listening to. There was no known history of violence attached to Prospect House itself.
It was a paradox that couldn’t be resolved. Adam was aware that this was perhaps the one true supernatural experience he had ever witnessed, yet for him what they were hearing had become somehow safe. Almost mundane, even.
Adam never did tell Margaret. He toyed vaguely with the idea of borrowing a tape recorder from someone, though he wasn’t sure how he could get such a large device into the house undetected, and in the end did nothing. There was no need to rush. Every night, or rather every small hours, the noise was there, unchanging.
Until it wasn’t. It lasted nearly two weeks, then it stopped. It never resumed.
He rather missed it.
Photo and art provided by Sam Dawson.
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