Ghost Electricity Read online

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 2 – Rob, Monday Night

  Chapter 3 – Fiona and Jessica, Monday Night

  Chapter 4 – Rob and Julian, Tuesday

  Chapter 5 – The Hargraves, Tuesday

  Chapter 6 – Fiona, Tuesday Night

  Chapter 7 – Fiona and Jessica, Tuesday Night

  Chapter 8 – Jacob, Wednesday

  Chapter 9 – Rob and Julian, Wednesday

  Chapter 10 – Fiona, Wednesday Night

  Chapter 11 – Fiona and Jessica, Thursday

  Chapter 12 – Jacob and Alice, Thursday

  Chapter 13 – Rob and Julian, Thursday

  Chapter 14 – Rob and Julian, Thursday Night

  Chapter 15 – Rob and Julian, Thursday Night

  Chapter 16 – Fiona, Thursday Night

  Chapter 17 – Rob and Julian, Thursday Night

  Chapter 18 – Rob and Julian, Thursday Night

  Chapter 19 – Fiona and Jessica, Thursday Night

  Chapter 20 – Fiona, Thursday Night

  Chapter 21 – Rob and Julian, Thursday Night

  Chapter 22 – Rob and Julian, Friday

  Chapter 23 – Fiona and Jessica, Friday

  Chapter 24 – Rob and Julian, Friday

  Chapter 25 – Alice, Friday Night

  Chapter 26 – Friday Night

  Chapter 27 – Friday Night

  Chapter 28 – Friday Night

  Chapter 29 – Friday Night

  Chapter 30 – Friday Night

  Chapter 31 – Saturday Morning

  Enjoyed Ghost Electricity?

  More Books by Sean Cunningham

  Acknowledgements

  Author’s Note

  About the Author

  Copyright

  Ghost Electricity

  The Hawthorn Chronicles Book 1

  Sean Cunningham

  Contents

  Chapter 1 – Julian, Monday Night

  Chapter 2 – Rob, Monday Night

  Chapter 3 – Fiona and Jessica, Monday Night

  Chapter 4 – Rob and Julian, Tuesday

  Chapter 5 – The Hargraves, Tuesday

  Chapter 6 – Fiona, Tuesday Night

  Chapter 7 – Fiona and Jessica, Tuesday Night

  Chapter 8 – Jacob, Wednesday

  Chapter 9 – Rob and Julian, Wednesday

  Chapter 10 – Fiona, Wednesday Night

  Chapter 11 – Fiona and Jessica, Thursday

  Chapter 12 – Jacob and Alice, Thursday

  Chapter 13 – Rob and Julian, Thursday

  Chapter 14 – Rob and Julian, Thursday Night

  Chapter 15 – Rob and Julian, Thursday Night

  Chapter 16 – Fiona, Thursday Night

  Chapter 17 – Rob and Julian, Thursday Night

  Chapter 18 – Rob and Julian, Thursday Night

  Chapter 19 – Fiona and Jessica, Thursday Night

  Chapter 20 – Fiona, Thursday Night

  Chapter 21 – Rob and Julian, Thursday Night

  Chapter 22 – Rob and Julian, Friday

  Chapter 23 – Fiona and Jessica, Friday

  Chapter 24 – Rob and Julian, Friday

  Chapter 25 – Alice, Friday Night

  Chapter 26 – Friday Night

  Chapter 27 – Friday Night

  Chapter 28 – Friday Night

  Chapter 29 – Friday Night

  Chapter 30 – Friday Night

  Chapter 31 – Saturday Morning

  Enjoyed Ghost Electricity?

  More Books by Sean Cunningham

  Acknowledgements

  Author’s Note

  About the Author

  Copyright

  Chapter 1 – Julian, Monday Night

  He was found.

  Julian was threading his way along the London Underground train platform at Hammersmith when his gaze brushed that of a hook-nosed young man his own age. It should have been the accidental encounter of city strangers, but Julian saw recognition flare in the other man’s eyes.

  He kept walking. His legs felt awkward and stiff and he hunched his narrow shoulders against the feel of the other man staring after him. At the end of the platform he found an open space near the yellow safety line. He tried to be casual as he glanced back through the crowd of evening commuters.

  The young man rubbed the side of his nose, pulled his phone from his pocket and leaned over it. Julian opened his senses to the man. Archie. He felt Archie’s pulse quickening, a hunter catching the scent of his prey.

  Julian’s chest tightened. He had known his return to London would be noticed sooner or later, but he hadn’t thought he’d be caught in a place like this. He wasn’t ready.

  “The next train to arrive on Platform One is a District Line service to Richmond. This train will arrive in two minutes.”

  The cool, automated voice jolted Julian into action. While Archie looked at his phone, Julian whispered words to the ceiling lights. He took his phone from the pocket of his suit trousers and mouthed more words of alignment and reflection.

  The display on the screen of Archie’s phone appeared on Julian’s. He watched as Archie scrolled through a site where bounties were posted. Julian’s face was there with a significant number beneath it, preceded by a currency symbol.

  Archie looked around, judging the positions of the commuters waiting for the next train. He meant to try and kill Julian right there on the platform – Julian could feel it. CCTV watched everywhere in London, but the city’s eyes were blurry and Archie’s clothing was unremarkable. There were witnesses all around, but people fell in front of trains. Julian realised he had chosen to stand at the incoming end of the platform. The train would be decelerating when it passed him, but still travelling at a bone-shattering speed. He couldn’t have given Archie a better opportunity.

  Archie moved, his pace a fair impression of meandering. He navigated around a group of middle-aged men and women chatting after a night at one of the local restaurants. Circling behind a Jamaican girl laughing on her phone brought him right behind Julian.

  It took an act of concentration for Julian to will his trembling hands to stillness.

  Unlike other Tube stations that were just a slight widening of the tunnel, Hammersmith was a high, open space of concrete, glass and steel. The approaching train didn’t send a warning wave of warm air ahead of it. Instead it rattled the rails as it clattered closer.

  Archie stepped forward. He craned his neck to peer past Julian at the approaching train and took his hands out of the pockets of his jacket. Julian concentrated on his breathing.

  The braking train reached the start of the platform.

  Julian watched Archie lean forward, tap the back of his left foot with his right one and pretend to stumble. He hit Julian at just the right angle to knock him in front of the train.

  The illusion only Archie could see vanished as he touched it. He gasped and clutched at air. He twisted as he fell and saw Julian where he actually stood, just out of reach, a little further along the platform.

  The train struck him with a meaty thud and pulled him under.

  Julian let out a long breath of relief as the screams began. He raked his fingers through his short, dark hair and tried to loosen his clenched shoulders and neck.

  One of the men in the nearby group of diners asked him if he’d seen what happened and he responded with a shrug and a shake of his head. A man had run to the platform phone to call the station office. People on the train looked out in growing annoyance as they wondered why the train doors hadn’t opened.

  “You realise the poor bastard who’s driving the train will be out of a job on medical leave,” Julian said.

  “You killed me.” Archie’s voice was hollow with shock. He stood beside
Julian, invisible to all other eyes as he stared at the side of the train, down towards where his body had fallen. Julian judged from the trajectory of his fall that he’d gone under the wheels.

  “Never mind all the people whose night you’ve ruined,” Julian said. “Mine, for instance. This line will be shut for the rest of the night now. I’ll have to catch a bus home and I really do prefer the Tube.”

  “You killed me.” Archie looked at Julian. “You killed me!”

  “You were trying to kill me,” Julian said. “On the subject of which, care to tell me why?”

  “You son of a bitch!”

  “Oh, you’re going to try and take the moral high ground?”

  “I’m going to get you for this,” Archie said. “I’m going to tear you so many new holes they’ll think you’re Swiss.”

  Julian raised an eyebrow. “What?”

  “You’ve got no idea how much trouble you’re in.” Archie stabbed an insubstantial finger at Julian’s chest. It passed through his flesh without resistance. Julian shivered once and stepped back.

  “Oh, you mean like Swiss cheese? Right, with you. What kind of trouble am I in?”

  Archie shook his head. “No. No, I don’t want you to get no warning. I want you to stay up at night, wondering when it’s coming. I want you seeing a car coming at you when you cross the street and thinking this could be the one that runs you down. You are fucked my lad. Fucked.”

  “You think so?” The corner of Julian’s mouth twitched. “Do you know what happens to ghosts in London?”

  Archie blinked several times as the question sank into his insubstantial skull. “What’s that supposed to mean then?”

  “You’re not moving on,” Julian said. “It usually happens by now, especially since I expect your head burst like a tomato if the train’s wheels went through it. No lingering brain activity, or at least that’s how I assume it works.”

  Archie looked down at himself.

  “What – what happens to ghosts in London?”

  There was a long, hungry roar from outside the station, deep in the night. Of all those present only Julian and Archie could hear it.

  “I’d run now,” Julian said.

  It took him an hour and a half and two buses to get home, thanks to some night-time roadworks near Shepherd’s Bush. He had to ask a station attendant for advice about which buses to catch. The Underground had taken him no time at all to understand, but London’s buses were still a puzzle.

  He stood at the bus stop with his fists in his coat pockets and when his bus arrived, he sat on the top deck with his arms folded across his chest. Nearly getting killed always left him trembling, after the adrenalin wore off.

  He listened to two guys his own age discuss at great length the progress of their favourite football teams. He had no interest in the sport, but the tone of their banter and their pleasure at the conversation drew his attention.

  He wished he had company of his own for the ride home.

  The shaking stopped by the time he got off the second bus, not far from the place he was house-sitting in Ealing. He was out in west London, in a leafy suburb that had been swallowed by the ever-growing city back in the time of Queen Victoria.

  On a street corner he looked up and saw a line of ghostly light drawn across the sky. It was not visible to normal human senses. The line, he knew, came down on an old plague cemetery outside what had been Ealing village centuries ago. The line of light stretched back into the centre of the city, where it and many like it fanned out across London.

  The place where he was staying was called Caverton Lodge. It belonged to the Jensen family, who were in southern France for a month’s holiday in the countryside. The house was a two-storey affair of sullen red brick and dark windows that stood behind a high brick wall and thick, concealing bushes. He had taken it to give himself time to find real accommodation, thinking a family home had to be better than four weeks in a hostel.

  Julian stood at the house’s front door for a minute with his fingers curled around the keys in his pocket. He tried to pull himself together. He didn’t know why, but what happened to ghosts in London didn’t happen in this house. He needed a clear mind, because as soon as he was indoors the house would attack him.

  A few items of mail lay on the floor in the entryway, all addressed to the Jensens. He flicked through their mail even though none of it could possibly be addressed to him.

  Julian looked up when a figure in a nightgown shambled out of the living room. She was dead, so dead she was colourless. The long, self-inflicted wounds running up her forearms glistened black against her translucent skin. She looked at him with lost, pleading eyes.

  “Ben? Is that you? Ben?”

  This one hadn’t bothered him much, not even at first. He had woken up in the middle of the night to a door slamming and there she was, lying in bed beside him, asking him if he was Ben. She had tried to put her gouged arms around him.

  Julian stepped around her, went down the hallway and into the family-sized kitchen. He stacked the new items of mail with the three weeks’ worth already on the kitchen’s pine worktop, then plucked one of the pizza place fliers out from the pile and tried to find a closing time somewhere on it. A crucial detail, he thought, that they should have remembered when putting the flier together. Opening a cupboard, he grabbed a clean glass and turned to the fridge.

  Two little girls regarded him with the solemn gaze of dead children. One wore pink and looked around seven. The other wore yellow and looked five. They were sopping wet and holding hands.

  Julian put the glass on the counter, rubbed his eyes and decided he’d had enough. “House, we have to talk.”

  The house groaned and creaked. A long series of noises rose up from below his feet and continued into the floor above his head. It sounded like every pipe in the house coming under pressure, one length at a time. It ended with a clatter from the water heater.

  “This isn’t really working for me,” Julian said. “I thought I could wait it out, but it looks like three weeks is my limit. I want you to stop this nonsense right now and behave yourself.”

  A powerful weight slammed into the floor in the room above the kitchen. The microwave crackled into life, beeped twice and went dark.

  “Last warning, house. We have one more week together. Can we get along, or do I have to take matters into my own hands?”

  He heard a soft thump behind him. Julian turned and saw a black cat sitting by the back door. Its steady yellow eyes were like lanterns.

  Julian’s mouth thinned to a line. He finally understood what had been done to the house.

  He took his wallet from the back pocket of his jeans and flipped through a collection of business cards and tickets, looking for one card in particular. Pulling his phone from his left pocket, he keyed the number on the card.

  “Roy Chandler? This is Julian Blackwood. I’m house-sitting for the Jensen family. Yes I do know what time it is. I’m going to ask you some questions and you will answer with the complete truth.”

  Julian asked several questions. He listened, ignoring the stammering that meant Roy Chandler was trying to lie.

  “I see. So they do this every year? Give someone to the spirit in the house to appease it?”

  The woman from the entryway had shuffled up behind the two little girls. The three of them stared at Julian, the faintest glimmer of intelligence flickering in their long-empty eyes.

  “I understand. I’m disinclined to take this well, Mr Chandler. We’ll speak again tomorrow and organise my new living arrangements.” Julian then spoke several more words in a language that made the black cat flatten its ears against its skull. The house creaked as though shifting in the wind.

  Julian ended the call. He looked thoughtfully at the three ghosts in the kitchen doorway before his gaze settled on the cat.

  “Where do I find him?”

  The cat trotted forward, past Julian’s feet and out into the hallway. The ghosts didn’t move aside so he wal
ked through them. He barely shivered as the blue coldness of them knifed through his body.

  The cat led him to a locked door beneath the stairs up to the house’s bedrooms. Julian frowned at it. He took the house keys from his pocket again, counted them three times and came up with a different number the last time. There was an extra key, one he’d failed to notice for the entire three weeks the keys had been in his possession.

  His mouth twisted. “Careless.” He selected the extra key and slotted it into the door. “It made me think it was just a cupboard.”

  A low, narrow stairway led down. The darkness was more than just the absence of light.

  “I don’t suppose you can offer any help?” Julian said to the cat. It stared at him. “No, you’re trapped here too. Well, never know if you don’t ask.”

  He put his foot on the first step down. The door slammed shut behind him and the lock clicked home.

  He held out his hand. A light bulb coughed up yellow light and went out. A blue light appeared over his palm. “I’m coming down, Bailey Jensen.”

  There was a hiss in the darkness below. It could have come from a boiler.

  Vertigo corkscrewed into the sides of his skull as he descended the stairs. He winced and gripped the railing while he pushed the attack away.

  When he reached the floor below, he sent his light higher into the air and brightened it. Darkness congealed around his light and he closed his hand into a fist, pushing against it. The resistance collapsed and blue light flared in the cellar.

  The room was unremarkable. There were piles of boxes, a few shelves of dusty junk and a cobweb-draped bicycle with a missing wheel. A boiler reached upwards and spread copper pipes across the ceiling. The space in the middle of the cellar, where a long-dried bloodstain blackened the cement, was left clear.

  “Come out, Bailey Jensen.”

  He appeared on the other side of the old bloodstain. He was blue-white and glowed much more brightly than the spectres above, as though super-charged with ghost electricity. His attire was of the early twentieth century. His mouth was a hungry hole and his eyes were large black pits.

  Julian heard a soft sound behind him. He glanced back and saw the cat sitting at the bottom of the stairs.