NINE
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The moment she got back
from her interview, Alison Parker strode into Frank's spare room,
flung her cases onto the bed, flung them open and grabbed her clothes
from the wardrobe. She stared to pack...
...but the moment the
first item of clothing hit the bottom of the first case, her phone
rang.
She picked it up from
where it lay by her bags, held it against her ear and said, 'Alison
Parker Enterprises. We create dreams like cheese creates nightmares.'
'Alison, what the hell're
you doing?' It was Liz and she sounded annoyed.
'I'm packing my bags.'
'To do what?'
'To go to Delgado Manor.
'That's what you think.
You're unpacking those bags and you're staying where you are.'
'I take it Lou's been in
touch.'
'Yes he's been in touch
and he's an idiot.'
'He's your boss.'
'I don't care what he is.
You're not my assistant and you never will be.'
'Yeah?'
'Yeah.'
'Well maybe you'd better
listen to this recording he gave me to play to you at times of
friction.'
She took her Dictaphone
from by her cases, held it to the phone and pressed Play.
It said, 'Betty, I'm your boss. This girl's your assistant. You'd
better let her assist you or I'll replace you with a man and make you
his secretary.'
Alison pressed Stop
then Rewind
and, again holding the phone to her ear, said, 'So, what've you got
to say about that?'
On the other end, Liz
gave a long long sigh. She went quiet. She did something that sounded
like pacing. She did something that sounded like stopping pacing. She
did something that sounded like more pacing. She stopped pacing.
Finally, she said, 'You want to be exposed to danger?'
'Yes I want to be exposed
to danger.'
'Right. I'll expose you
to danger - and then let's see how you like it. Tonight, the moment
the sun sets, I need you to do something for me.'
'Does it involve sticking
my job up my arse?'
'No. It involves a drive
to Sleeton.'
'Which is?'
'An old abandoned
coalfield on the way to Hangerton. According to local legend, since
its desertion, it's been haunted by a creature called the Beast of
Sleeton. Tonight, I want you to go to that coalfield, I want you to
sit in your car in the middle of it and I want you to see if you can
find the Beast.'
'Because?'
'From what I've heard
since I got here, that thing might be what killed Danny boy.'
'And if I find it?'
'Do nothing. Stay in the
car and phone me. Keep your doors and windows locked and, if it makes
any move towards you, get out of there. Got that?'
'Got it.'
'And Alison?'
'Yeah?'
'Good luck. Coz if that
thing gets its teeth into you, luck's the only hope you'll have.'
*
Liz jabbed off her mobile
phone, tossed it on the table to her left and resumed her
investigation. Alison wanted to see what sort of things an occult
investigator had to deal with? Well now she was going to find out.
And if she didn't like what she found out? Tough. She'd dug her own
grave, now she was going to have to lie in it.
As for Liz's own
investigations, if her chats with the staff had been of little use to
her, she had other options available. She'd tried searching the house
from front to back and side to side. Now to try up and down.
*
Liz was on the upstairs
landing, stood beneath a hatch in the ceiling. According to Rachel,
when she'd been showing Liz around, it led up to the roof. Liz
grabbed a table from where it stood by the wall, and dragged it to
stand under the hatch.
She climbed up onto the
table and, with a twist of its handle, opened the hatch. It lifted
upwards. She pushed it aside and then, with a jump, hauled herself up
through it.
She hauled herself up
onto the roof, scrambled to her feet and put the hatch back in place.
Now she straightened up, drew a lop of stray hair away from one eye
and set off in search of mystic symbols and signs of sacred geometry
in the house's layout.
She found none.
All she found were a few
time-worn spirettes, the domed glass roof of Delgado's Ritual Room
and a pigeon whose condition suggested it had been dead since just
before the dawn of time.
*
Search concluded, Liz
headed back for the hatch, lifted it, lowered herself through it and
dropped down onto the table. She straightened up, grabbed the hatch
above her, moved it back into place and secured it. Now she jumped
down from the table and pushed it back to where she'd found it.
That was another dead-end
explored.
Now for the next.
She made her way
downstairs and into the entrance hall where she watched the
grandfather clock whose hands were permanently stopped at
three-thirty. According to Mrs Hobson, the thing had never worked
since it had been installed. That didn't make sense. A clock that
didn't work had no use...
...except to hide things.
She moved it away from
the wall...
...and found nothing. A
few raps at the section of wall behind it proved it concealed no
hollowed-out passageways.
She returned the clock to
its rightful place, lifted its glass-fronted cowl, set the fingers to
the right time, opened its pendulum case and set its pendulum
swinging.
It swung for a few
moments then stopped.
*
Midnight found Liz in
bed, using her laptop to scroll through the background info Lou'd
sent her just before telling her he'd appointed Alison.
According to the files,
the staff were who they said they were, and each had the back story
they'd claimed to have. On top of that, none of them had anything
that even resembled a criminal record. They were squeaky clean -
either that or they were good at covering their tracks. Right now she
wouldn't put it past all of them to have killed Daniel Robinson.
She switched off her
laptop, closed its lid and put it by the bed. She flicked off the
bedside lamp, slipped her gun under her pillow and laid her head on
the pillow. She gazed up at the ceiling, and once again Liz Sanford
settled down for a night of trying to be a victim.
*
With a long, slow crunch
of gravel, a car came to a halt at the head of a road that had
clearly once led to somewhere but didn't any more. It was Alison
Parker's VW Beetle and she was here to look for the Beast of Sleeton.
She couldn't deny it, if
anywhere looked like a place a mystery beast would haunt, this did; a
rubble and house-brick strewn field whose over-long grass seemed to
reach out like the fingers of death. A hundred yards away to her
right, a skeletal figure scarred the face of a low red moon. It was
the towering hulk of a pit winding head.
She switched off her
engine, made sure the doors were locked then took her rucksack from
the seat beside her. She opened it and retrieved three items; a
Thermos flask, a Tupperware box containing her sandwiches, and a pair
of binoculars. She rested the flask and box on the rucksack on the
seat beside her then concentrated on the binoculars.
According to the man in
the shop she'd bought them from, these weren't just any binoculars,
they were sniper's
binoculars. He'd reckoned they could spot a vacationing president at
a mile and a half off. Then, once spotted, you could get your rifle
out and pick him off at leisure. 'Pop,' he'd said, 'Bye bye,
President.' She'd had the feeling he was a little odd.
Still, he clearly knew
his optics. She slipped off the lens caps, put them on the dashboard
then held the binoculars to her eyes.
And, leaning forward,
Alison Parker peered out into darkness for any signs of a creature
that could tear apart a fully armed man.
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