Page 129 of Love at First Fright

Brad turned and glowered at me. “Speed up, then! Where are we going?”

I stopped at a fork in the path. Left or right? Both looked identical—narrow gravel tracks disappearing between walls of green.

Bat? I silently pleaded, glancing around at him.

He materialised beside me, hands in his pockets. “You’ve already been there once. Don’t you remember?”

“It was so dark last night,” I ground out to Brad/Bat.

Brad sighed.

Bat grinned. Didn’t move.

“Please?” I silently mouthed at Bat whilst Brad studied the manor’s façade.

“Since you asked so nicely.” He floated past me down the left path, glancing back over his shoulder. “Keep up, Charlie. I know how much you like running.”

I jogged after Bat, who’d picked up speed, weaving between overgrown rose bushes and beneath a crumbling stone archway.

The path twisted, doubled back, opened into a small clearing with a broken fountain, then narrowed again.

“This place is massive,” I muttered.

“Yup,” Bat said cheerfully. “Thomas has been tending it for two hundred years. Still hasn’t got it all under control.”

Finally, blessedly, the apple tree appeared ahead—gnarled branches spreading wide, the space beneath its canopy darker than the surrounding garden.

Brad stood with his hands on his hips, staring down at the patch of bare earth. “This it?”

“Yeah.”

The wrongness hit me again as I approached—that same sensation of something fundamentally off about the ground beneath the tree. Like the earth itself was sick.

Brad crouched, reaching for the small rock that marked the grave. His fingers traced the carved initials: M.D.

“This is it? Just this?”

“And the dead earth.” I gestured at the barren patch. “Clearly, nothing grows here for a reason.”

Bat floated above the grave, arms crossed, watching Brad with narrowed eyes.

Brad’s hand hovered over the dirt. Hesitated.

Then he pressed his palm flat against the ground.

“Brad, don’t—”

His body went rigid. Eyes rolled back. Mouth opened in a silent gasp.

I lunged forward, grabbed his shoulder, yanked him backwards.

Brad sprawled on the grass, chest heaving. “What—what the fuck—”

“I tried to warn you! That grave almost… yesterday it felt like it was trying to pull me in. Or something. I don’t know exactly what happened, but it felt bad.”

Brad scrambled away from the bare earth, face pale. “Christ. That’s—” He pressed a hand to his chest, breathing hard. “That’s not normal haunting energy. That’s something else.”

“No shit.”