Page 52 of Dead Vengeance

But Liam seems to have this under control. “This evil thing,” he says, sharply insistent towards Fabian, “can create illusions. Very strong and severe illusions that… They seem to manifest in some physical ways. Last night, it attacked me, and I have this.” He points to the scratch on his cheek, which makes Fabian cock his head with a touch of interest.

“So you can physically feel them?” Fabian asks. “Without being dead?”

“What?” Liam asks, somewhere between annoyed and confused. “Yeah, I could feel the hallucination.”

“No, I mean ghosts,” Fabian explains. “You can feel them?”

Liam’s brow pulls tight. “This isn’t a ghost that we’re talking about. That’s what I’m trying to explain to you.”

“Oh…” says Fabian. “Oh.” Then he looks out the window. “But Simon, he’s a ghost, right?”

“Yes, but—”

“So can he, uh…” He drops a spoon of sugar into his tea, stirs. “Can he… touch?”

“What?” Liam repeats, more harried than before.

“Me?” asks Fabian. “Could he touch me? Or-or anyone? Just asking because… Um. Touching. It’s… physical.”

“Yeah?” Liam breathes, looking as befuddled I’m beginning to feel.

This must be my place to step in, especially as Liam seems to have lost his train of thought entirely in the oddness of this discussion. “Simon can manifest touch,” I explain. “Movement. He’s an advanced-level ghost. But he’s not what we’re worried about here.”

Fabian’s eyes light on me. “So your other thing… it’s… in the house? Somewhere?”

“Yes. Upstairs in the attic. But don’t worry, it’s never come down here, and—”

“So…” Fabian interrupts. “So, I might be better off… Or w-we might be better off, Liam, if you, as the more experienced of the two of us, took the house, and that thing, and if I, say, for example, watched the perimeter? Maybe went outside? To see if, um, I can distract any other ghosts, that might still be out there, from bothering you? While you’re working?”

He’s got the jerky movements of a junkie desperate to score his next fix. And he’s a bizarre situation I’ve never yet found myself in.

“I’d rather we stick together,” Liam tells him firmly.

I think maybe Fabian and I both have our fair share of disappointment with that comment, for different reasons, even if it is a very sensible suggestion.

“You do realise,” Liam says slowly, “that ghost out there is a killer?”

Again, that soft groan-whine from Fabian.

Just what the fuck?

“Anyway,” I attempt to pull things back on track, “it seems like we’re all on the same page now. About addressing the thing upstairs.”

“We are,” says Liam, trying to speak for both of them.

“What about the history of the place?” asks Fabian.

Finally, a perfectly reasonable, normal reaction from him.

“That’s what I was asking yesterday,” says Liam, needlessly, but with an interesting air of ownership about it. “Mr Gravely says he has no record of any official deaths here, is that right?”

“Correct, Liam.”

“Well, have you looked?” Fabian asks. “In my experience, ghosts don’t just turn up at your house for no reason.”

Unfortunately, he is right about that. Or he would have been. Until recently, when ghost activity started going crazy. Either way, it’s not something I need Liam looking too far into.

“Just because there’s no record doesn’t mean nothing happened here,” I argue. “This place has been here some four hundred years. A lot can go down in that time without it being recorded.”