Secret Lives of the Dead E-Book

Tim Lebbon

• Herausgeber: Titan Books
• Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 382

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025

Beschreibung

A dark folk horror tale of a deadly family curse, crime and murder that is sure to turn your blood cold, from the award-winning, New York Times bestselling author of Netflix's The Silence. When Jodi, BB and Matt decide to burgle a derelict country home as a thrilling dare, they become embroiled in a twisted legacy of supernatural terror. There are rumours of a bizarre curse hanging over the hoard of antiques and jewellery within the house. And unbeknownst to the others, one member of the trio has darker motives for breaking into the property. Lem is a brutal man obsessed with a gruesome family legend. He is determined to right the wrongs of the past and lift the curse placed on his bloodline. By completing the work of his father and bringing a bizarre selection of scattered relics back together, he hopes to be free of the malign influence that has hounded every generation of his family for two centuries. Across a single day a deadly pursuit will culminate on the desolate, storm-swept Crow Island, and those involved are given cause to wonder… can believing in a curse deeply enough bring its own bad luck?

Leseprobe

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Leave us a Review

Copyright

Dedication

September 2024

June 2000

September 2024

July 2007

Jodi Alone

September 2024

November 1976

September 2024

April 2007

September 2024

Lem and the Relics

September 2024

July 2011

September 2024

October 2024

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Praise for

SECRET LIVESOF THE DEAD

“This book is a tense, moody white-knuckler sure to send a creeping chill up your spine.”

PAUL TREMBLAY, New York Times-bestselling author of Horror Movie and A Head Full of Ghosts

“Lebbon’s latest proves without question that he is a master at his craft… I will confess to being powerless to put this book down, and the final denouement will leave you breathless as only Tim Lebbon can.”

RONALD MALFI, Bram Stoker Award® recipient and author of Small Town Horror

“Secret Lives of the Dead is a riveting, wholly absorbing crime-chiller rooted in trauma and friendship. Tim Lebbon is a true master of unrelenting suspense and he continues to shock me and impress me in equal measure with his dark literary powers book after book.”

ERIC LAROCCA, author of Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke

“A rocket-fueled, blood-soaked tale of cat and mouse with a witch’s curse as its beating heart... Secret Lives of the Dead is a wholly original thriller.”

CHRISTINA HENRY, author of Alice and The House that Horror Built

“Secret Lives of The Dead is now my all-time favourite Lebbon book!”

NUZO ONOH, Bram Stoker Lifetime Achievement Award® recipient and author of Where the Dead Brides Gather

“If Britbox and Shudder wrote a book together, it might come out something like Tim Lebbon’s genre-busting, dread-inducing crime horror novel Secret Lives of the Dead. Full of secrets, trauma, friendship, and curses, Lebbon’s latest is a must-read!”

CHRISTOPHER GOLDEN, author of The Night Birds

“Tim Lebbon has hand-crafted a stunning hard-boiled artifact of horror noir, equal parts witchcraft and crime, blood and heartwood, serving as further testament to his supernatural abilities as one of contemporary speculative fiction’s leading alchemists.”

CLAY MCLEOD CHAPMAN, author of Wake Up and Open Your Eyes

“Great characters, an unstoppable, implacable evil, and pacing that grabs you by the hand and doesn’t let go make Secret Lives of the Dead the perfect horror thriller. It had me from page one!”

ALMA KATSU, author of The Fervor

“A propulsive, imaginative, page-turning heist-to-horror novel in which no one is safe. I absolutely burned through this book.”

KEITH ROSSON, author of Fever House

“A horror novel so good it tangles itself in your bones.”

LINDY RYAN, author of Bless Your Heart

“Secret Lives of the Dead is both an eerie and original slice of folk-horror and a riveting, relentless psychological thriller that will very likely keep you up all night. I couldn’t put it down. It may be Lebbon’s best yet, and that’s saying a lot.”

DANIEL CHURCH, author of The Hollows

Also by Tim Lebbonand available from Titan Books

THE LAST STORM

EDEN

COLDBROOK

THE SILENCE

AMONG THE LIVING

THE RELICS TRILOGY

RELICS

THE FOLDED LAND

THE EDGE

THE RAGE WAR

PREDATOR: INCURSION

ALIEN: INVASION

ALIENS VS PREDATOR: ARMAGEDDON

THE CABIN IN THE WOODS: THE OFFICIAL MOVIE NOVELIZATION

ALIEN: OUT OF THE SHADOWS

KONG: SKULL ISLAND – THE OFFICIAL MOVIE NOVELIZATION

FIREFLY: GENERATIONS

LEAVE US A REVIEW

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Secret Lives of the Dead

Print edition ISBN: 9781835413555

E-book edition ISBN: 9781835413531

Published by Titan Books

A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd

144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP

www.titanbooks.com

First edition: August 2025

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead (except for satirical purposes), is entirely coincidental.

© Tim Lebbon 2025.

Tim Lebbon asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

EU RP (for authorities only)eucomply OÜ, Pärnu mnt. 139b-14, 11317 Tallinn, [email protected], [phone]

Typeset by Rich Mason in Minion Pro.

‘A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it.’

OSCAR WILDE

Jodi was setting her usual good pace, and although it was earlier than BB usually preferred to go running, he thought he might just get used to this. The chill morning was still and quiet. Mist hung in a low sheen, silvering the dew-speckled fields. The looming sunrise sculpted the line of low hills to the east, just silhouettes right now, but he could already see the pale ghosts of farmhouses beginning to emerge. To their left the sluggish river flowed with a comfortable murmur, calm beneath a hazy blanket. It was beautiful.

They crossed a low wooden bridge spanning a stream feeding into the river, their footsteps loud and then quiet again when they hit the grass on the other side. Once through a small gate and in the field beyond, BB put on a burst of speed so that he was running beside her.

“You’ve kept this all to yourself,” he said.

“You’re the one who prefers road running.”

“I mean the early mornings. This is glorious.”

“And you’re the one who likes a lie-in.”

“The river looks inviting, too. Fancy stripping off for a swim?”

She smiled sidelong at him, then switched direction straight across the field, no longer following the trodden footpath beside the river. BB slowed for a few seconds, then fell in behind her again, trying to match her footsteps through the tall wet grass. It was a game he’d played as a kid when he was out walking with his parents. Then, he’d had to stretch. Now, his footfalls were tight and fast. They ran in silence until they reached the far corner of the field, where she vaulted an overgrown stile and disappeared from view.

“Hey!” BB leaped the stile, caught his foot on a trailing bramble and almost spilled. He landed, caught his breath, and looked beyond the hedge. A narrow path wound uphill, and he just caught sight of her red running pack disappearing from view. “Jodi!”

She didn’t answer. It didn’t matter. They both knew where they were headed, and though BB hadn’t run these trails before he often travelled the surrounding roads and lanes on his bike. He was familiar with the old, abandoned house on the hill, too, though he’d never paid it that much attention. Not until two weeks ago. Now, it was the only thing on his mind.

BB ran on, enjoying the silence and watching his footing. It wouldn’t do to turn an ankle now. What the hell would Matt say to that? He glanced at his watch, though he had a pretty good idea of the time. Approaching seven in the morning. They were nearing a narrow road, and around the corner he slowed and came to a stop where Jodi was leaning against a fence. A potholed lane lay beyond, connecting one main road to another and providing access for several farms and a handful of isolated country homes. Unlike the house forefront in his mind, those other places were all inhabited. She took a swig from her water bottle and handed it to him.

“Matt’ll be on his way,” he said.

She nodded, breathing hard, and tapped two fingers against her forehead. “Mission going entirely according to plan, sir.”

“Er, I think you’re the boss of this operation.”

“Shared ownership.”

“I love it when a plan comes together,” BB said.

She frowned.

“George Peppard. Hannibal Smith, The A-Team.”

“Huh?”

“You’re fucking kidding me.”

“I thought that was Liam Neeson,” Jodi said, bemused.

BB went to protest again, never quite sure when she was winding him up, when they heard a car engine. Jodi grabbed his arm and tugged him away from the fence, back towards the sheltering undergrowth.

“Hey, we’re just two runners—” he said.

“But if we don’t have to be seen, best we’re not.” She pulled him down behind a wild hedge and they saw the silvery flash of a van pass by.

He leaned in close and kissed her ear. “Euch! Sweat.”

“You don’t usually complain,” she said. “Come on. Across the road then up the hill.”

They moved on, and BB felt the familiar thrill of effort, made more complete by exercising with Jodi. They didn’t do it together often enough. He preferred biking or running on the roads when the sun was up, her love was trail running pre-dawn or at dusk. She said she liked the peace and solitude, and it was a reflection of her general dislike of crowds, and other people in general. A perfect run for her was ten miles along the river or around the local hills without encountering another person. This morning he was really starting to understand the allure, and not only because of what they were doing. This felt good for the soul.

Or maybe it was the idea of an extra few grand in his bank that made it feel so good.

As they passed through a small woodland, something big took fright and disappeared into the shadows with a heavy rustle of undergrowth.

“What the hell was that?” he asked.

“Deer,” Jodi said, slowing to a walk. “Maybe a tiger.” They were at the edge of the small wooded area, halfway up a steep hillside, with the dawn landscape laid out before them.

“There are deer here?”

“You wouldn’t see them on the bike. Connect with nature.”

“I’m a townie.”

“Yet I still hang around with you.” Jodi stood with hands on her hips. “Just get a load of that.”

“‘Hang around’ with me?”

She didn’t answer. As he stood beside her he saw why. The view was gorgeous, and both of them breathed hard from exertion as they soaked it in. From higher up the whole countryside was bathed in morning mist, glowing pink from the dawn sun breaking over the distant hills. Copses of trees and rolls in the land peeked above the sun-touched mist, and in the distance a church spire and a windmill marked their place. The scene was still and quiet and incredibly peaceful, but BB’s gaze was drawn closer. To the right, on top of the hill and visible behind old oaks and a scatter of younger trees, the pale façade of Morgan Manor caught the sunrise.

Jodi shrugged off her running pack and dug out a small pair of binoculars. She scanned the house, then handed them to BB.

He laughed. “Really?”

“What?”

“It’s like we’re professionals, or something.”

“We’ve got to make sure. You know how careful we have to be, right?”

This time his laughter was nervous. Yeah, they’d talked about it, but this was a bit of an adventure, that was all. One with a possible payday, and that would suit him fine. Even Matt didn’t know the extent of his remaining gambling debts from back in the day, and if things worked out here no one ever had to. At the very least, they’d have a couple of hours exploring this old place that had once featured heavily in local history and myth, but which over the last couple of decades had faded away in most peoples’ memories. When they were kids, and BB was still just plain Sam King, he and Matt had once spent a day planning an excursion here because rumour had it a homeless guy had lived in the house for a while, and no one had seen him in months. Matt said maybe they’d find his skeleton. Except back then he’d said “skellington”. BB had been keen to go. Then something else had grabbed their attention – he couldn’t remember what now, only that it was Before Girls so was probably a new bike or a superhero TV series, or something – and their expedition had never made it off the page. He couldn’t recall the last time he’d even looked up the hill at the partially hidden structure when he was cycling past.

Not until two weeks ago, anyway.

BB lifted the binoculars and scanned the house, the trees that partially shielded it from view and the surrounding hillside. The long driveway was hidden on the building’s opposite side, where it curved downhill through fields given over to grazing cattle until it met the road half a mile distant. That was where Matt would arrive from, and once their recce was done they would make their way around the foot of the hill to meet him.

BB gasped and froze, looking at the house.

“What?” Jodi asked.

“It’s horrible!” he said, and he almost dropped the binoculars as she shoved him against a tree.

“Dick.” She grabbed the binoculars from him and shoved them in her backpack. He heard them clank against something else, and her eyes flickered to his and away again.

BB didn’t think anything of it. Later, he’d have cause to remember that moment, and the strange look in Jodi’s eyes. He was used to her being like that. They’d been together for just over a year, and he loved her like absolute fucking crazy, but a couple of months ago after a beer too many he’d told Matt that he really didn’t think he knew her all that well. When Matt asked what he meant he’d spent a good minute or two thinking about it before saying, It’s like she’s haunted. Matt hadn’t mocked him like he should have. BB lived life shallow and fast, and Matt wasn’t used to seeing his friend so serious.

Jodi shouldered her backpack, clipped it on and glanced at her watch. “Come on. All looks good, and quiet. His Matt-ness will be on his way, and I want to be there to open the gate for him.”

They left the cover of the woods and headed out into the dawn, skirting around the hillside and staying away from the old place they’d come to burgle. Just a young couple out for an early morning run.

Two weeks earlier, they are enjoying an afternoon in the pub garden. Jodi knows she has him when he stops talking and just stares at her over the top of his pint. He’s only ever that quiet when he’s thinking something through, and once he starts thinking about this, he’ll be in. She’s pretty, pretty certain of that. So she doesn’t lay it on too thick. That would feel like overkill, and she doesn’t want to appear too keen. It’s just a loose, crazy idea after a few drinks in the sun. Let BB muse on it, perhaps even make it his idea, and he’ll be more likely to take it seriously.

And once he commits, Matt will be along for the ride.

“So why hasn’t anyone else gone there and taken it?” BB asks.

Jodi shrugs, takes a sip of wine and pretends not to care. She catches Matt’s eye and he’s giving her the smallest of smiles, and she knows that he knows what she’s playing at here. He’s sharper than BB, quieter, a little more dour. He can see right through her, or at least he thinks he can. Deeper than BB, at least. She raises one eyebrow at him in return. They get on really well, and that more than anything makes her feel so comfortable in the company of them both. Matt and BB have been friends since they were barely walking kids at Mariton’s local nursery, and she loves the feeling of being accepted by Matt. She hasn’t taken his friend away from him; rather, BB has brought Matt another friend. He’s a good-looking guy but she doesn’t fancy him, and that’s because what they have is closer to brother and sister. Jodi always wished she’d had a sibling. And thinking that always makes her sad, because it brings her mum to mind, and her dad’s violent death.

“How do you know about it?” BB asks.

“I told you, that would be telling.”

“But you don’t know what’s there, so it could just be a box full of old cracked plates, or a treasure hoard of global significance.”

“That’s why it’s an adventure. At the very least we get to take a look in that fucking spooky old place.”

The garden in the King’s Arms is buzzing. It’s a Saturday evening in early September, and people are taking advantage of a stretch of warm weather. Families gather at bench tables, kids lark around the playground in the garden’s corner, and Jodi has led them to the table closest to the river. It’s away from the others, and she chose it partly so that she could plant the seed of her idea without anyone overhearing. It’s also peaceful so close to the flowing water. One time a couple of months back they’d seen a kingfisher dipping in and taking its lunch.

“Supposed to be a curse over it, too,” she mutters.

“Curse?” Matt and BB exchange a glance, and it carries the comfortable weight of decades of friendship. Perhaps that’s what makes Jodi feel a little distanced, but she thinks not. She thinks it’s because she’s glossing over something that has troubled her for fifteen years. Whenever she thinks of her dad’s final day it’s all blood and fire and death.

“Just something stupid,” she says. “Bad luck. That sort of crap.”

BB chuckles. Matt sips his pint and rolls his eyes.

Then BB sits up straight and says, “We’ll be rural exploring! You know, like urban exploring except—”

“Except rural.” Matt glances around to make sure no one else is within earshot. Jodi is quiet – she’s always careful to keep her head down, subdued even, when she’s had a few drinks – but BB is getting louder. She knows very well that he’s pretty daring, doesn’t mind a bit of adventure, and loves the thrill of doing something a little off the chart. He alludes to a roguish past, but when she presses him on it he becomes a bit vague, as if the stories he has to tell belong to someone else. That’s fair enough; she gives him the same. She likes to think they’re beyond trying to impress each other, but she also knows she has to pitch this just right. It’s far too important to risk fucking it up. She could do it on her own, sure. But with Matt and BB in with her, it was much more likely to go right.

That’s why she’s waited until they are three drinks in.

They drift away from the conversation, and Matt tells them about a new contract he’s bid on that might take him away from town for a few weeks. It sounds like a good earner, but he doesn’t like being away from home. BB calls him a pussy. Matt tells him it’s his fucking round. BB goes into the pub, and Matt and Jodi chat and laugh and pointedly ignore the idea of breaking into and burgling an abandoned manor house.

Jodi is happy that the seed of the idea is planted, and confident that it will bloom.

Later, after they’ve eaten at the local Mexican restaurant, she and BB go home and crack open a bottle of wine. He drinks three glasses to her one, and she’s still just merry when he’s edging towards inebriated. He’s a loveable, affable drunk, laughing and soft and more open about his own feelings and failings. They cuddle up on the sofa and watch an old movie. They start kissing, and the movie is forgotten. Jodi jumps off, pushing away his grasping hands and leaving the room; a minute later she’s back, naked and spreadeagled above him, lowering herself teasingly down, telling him this is how she’ll Mission Impossible into Morgan Manor’s basement to grab the loot and that she won’t leave a trace.

By morning, fuzzy headed, BB has agreed with the idea, and he’s on the phone to Matt saying they should meet up to discuss “the adventure”. Jodi has insisted on this. No texts, no electronic mention of what they’re going to do. That’s half of how they’ll get away with it.

The other half is all down to her.

While BB is showering she sits in the garden with a coffee and thinks of her dead father, and how she’s spent so many years waiting to make the bastard who killed him pay.

Matt woke at 3 a.m. and couldn’t get back to sleep. Jangling nerves kept him awake and made him sweat. He threw off the bed covers and got cold; pulled them over himself again. Stared at the ceiling. Took deep breaths and closed his eyes, but opened them again to the imagined sound of a prison door slamming.

We’re beyond suspicion, Jodi had said. A local electrician, a PE teacher and a second-rate graphic designer working in a print shop.

You’re not second rate, BB had said. You’re really good. Jodi hadn’t answered, but she’d smiled. BB’d had lots of girlfriends, but Matt knew he really meant it when he said Jodi was The One. He saw it in the unguarded way he looked at her when she didn’t know he was.

“Beyond suspicion,” Matt said to himself, and close to four in the morning he got up and made coffee. He did so beneath the light of the kitchen extractor fan. He rented a small two-bed house he could barely afford, and neighbours were used to him leaving early for work, but even he was rarely up at this hour. He didn’t want to raise any flags. “Beyond suspicion,” he said again as he drank his coffee. He’d thought about those words a lot, and they sounded like the title of an average TV series in which all the characters were anything but beyond suspicion. But deep down he knew Jodi was right. They all had respectable jobs, and Matt knew half the people in town because of his electrical firm. Jodi had only lived there for a couple of years, true, but she was well liked, if low-key. She helped with litter picking and walked her elderly neighbour’s dog.

Matt knew that BB still carried a bit of gambling debt, but he’d worked hard at paying it off. He’d even given him some money a year or so back, even though Matt’s own situation wasn’t quite as rosy as some people might believe. His company was doing OK, though still recovering from the hit he’d sustained during the Covid pandemic. But his divorce a few years ago had driven him to the edge of bankruptcy, and he’d been so upset during that period that he’d perhaps let Gemma take too much. If so, it hadn’t been intentional on her part, but it wasn’t likely she’d come to an epiphany and return anything to him. He rarely spoke to her anymore, but he knew she’d set up her own landscape design company up north. He thought there was a guy. That was OK, he hoped she was happy. BB often told Matt he was too fucking nice, and on this occasion that also translated as too fucking skint.

So beyond suspicion, maybe. But none of that would matter if they were careful.

He left home just after six. Driving out of town he had a brainwave and pulled into a quiet lane, parking up in a field gateway. Dawn suggested itself across the eastern hills, and outside his battered van he took a moment to breathe in the cool morning air. He’d run each of the last four days to work away some of his nervousness, and his legs ached and felt stiff. It was a good feeling. Born and bred in Mariton, he still loved living there. Some might say his horizons were too close, and BB had left and come back a couple of times before he hit thirty. But this place was home. Matt sometimes suspected that staying was stubbornness, because it was Gemma who’d upped and left. In his mind he portrayed that as running away. That made him feel better, and he grabbed on to the best bit of advice his father had given him before passing away: Be content with whatever you’ve got and you’ll always be happy.

In front of the van he scooped some damp soil from beneath the gateway and smeared it across his numberplate. It wasn’t part of the plan they’d come up with together, but it seemed like a sensible precaution. Walking around to the rear to do the same, he froze and stared at the side of the vehicle. He emitted a short, snorty laugh, then carried on giggling. He hadn’t laughed like this on his own in… forever. There was a hysteria to it.

On the van’s side it said, Matt Shorey, Elec/Tricks.

Everyone in town knew his van. That’s why no one will see it, Jodi had said, because everyone’s so used to seeing it.

He wiped his hands on his jeans, sat back inside and took a few deep, slow breaths. Then he started off away from town and towards Morgan Manor, driving slow and safe, and wondering how the holy fuck BB had ever managed to persuade him this was a good idea.

It was Jodi. Her idea, her seed planted, the sway she held over BB. Matt adored her, and it was rare he’d ever felt so close to someone after such a short time. There was a vulnerability to her and also a quiet strength, and he thought perhaps their friendship was easy and pressure-free, and safe, because there could be nothing more. She and BB were tight, solid and in love even after such a relatively short time, and this made Matt feel so much more comfortable in her presence. He’d never been as confident around women as BB, and let doubts winnow away at him all the time, but his relationship with Jodi almost felt like that between siblings. She’d once said that together they were BB’s solid foundation, and that he’d tumble without them.

There was that, and also the allure of a handful of cash if they found anything worth stealing in the manor. Jodi said she was good at deep searching on the net, following rumours, but that still troubled Matt. You had to know where to start looking for rumours, and he didn’t think for a moment Jodi had googled “hidden treasure in Morgan Manor”.

He’d settled his nerves, and allowed himself to be drawn in, for two reasons. One, it was an adventure with his two best friends, and something his life needed right now was adventure. Something unusual, and daring, and apart from the norm. And two, if they were caught breaking into the old, abandoned house, the most he’d end up with was a caution. In reality, that slamming prison door was a product of his overactive anxieties. The worst way he’d broken laws before were a couple of speeding tickets, being arrested for a drunken fight when he was seventeen and the occasional cash-in-hand payments he took for local work for people he knew well. He was hardly Mariton’s organised crime kingpin. And all three of them were, as Jodi had said, beyond suspicion.

She’s still a bit of a mystery, though, he thought as he hit the minor road that wound eventually around the foot of hill upon which loomed Morgan Manor. Easy-going, quiet, yet incredibly sharp, Jodi shared very little about her past. Scars on her chin and left forearm were from a bicycle crash when she was a kid, she claimed. They looked like more than that to Matt. BB seemed to accept when she said that she was boring and there wasn’t much to tell, but Matt saw deeper. At least, he wished he could see deeper. BB had chosen his words carefully when he’d said, It’s like she’s haunted. For Matt, those four words summed up Jodi perfectly. Maybe what they were doing today was one way of her exposing and confronting her ghosts.

He arrived at the gates right on time. BB and Jodi were there in their running gear and backpacks, and by the time he left the road and approached the gates in a low recessed wall, they had them open ready for him to drive through. They squeezed into the front passenger seat almost before he’d stopped.

“Good morning!” BB said.

“You smell,” Matt said.

“Charming,” Jodi said.

“Not you. Him. You smell of roses and sweet dreams.”

“I think… maybe… you’re being sexist?”

Matt laughed, feeling his brief burst of hysteria still underlying everything. Being with his friends helped calm it a little. BB, brash and excited about doing something so crazy. Jodi, calm and quietly in control.

“So, you two boys ready for an adventure?” she asked.

“Oh yes!” BB said.

Matt headed up the long driveway that curved around the gentle hill towards the house, and as they drew closer he could see more of it through the trees and undergrowth surrounding it. None of their planning had brought them close, other than Jodi who’d come out here on a night run just to see if there were any windows lit. She’d reported a quiet, silent place. Almost spooky.

“So what now?” Matt asked as he stopped the van and killed the engine. Morgan Manor’s scarred painted façade was yellowed by early morning sunlight. The gravelled driveway was speckled with vibrant weeds and clumps of shrubs that had sprouted through the unused route. Most of the windows were either shuttered or, where there were no shutters, boarded over. The steps leading up to the wide front door were scattered with clumps of rotten wood from where a portion of the elaborate, wide porch had collapsed. If ever a building looked unlived in and alone it was this one.

Jodi opened the door and jumped from the van. Her feet crunched on gravel, and Matt scanned the building and surroundings looking for movement, signs of life, danger. There was nothing.

Jodi walked towards the old house. “Now, we knock.”

Jodi knocked on the door. It gave a dull clump, not the echoing sound she’d been expecting. She felt foolish doing it, because the place was so obviously unoccupied. They stood in silence for a moment, a held breath.

“Nobody home,” she said.

BB had already shrugged off his pack, and now he pulled out the claw hammer he’d been carrying, its head wrapped in a sock to prevent it banging against the other tools in there. Jodi carried her own tools, but hoped she wouldn’t need them.

“Around the back, then,” BB said. He led the way, and Matt glanced at his van before he and Jodi followed.

“It’s fine,” she said. “No one can see it from the road.”

“Right.” He sounded unsure, and now they were here and actually doing what they’d been talking about for two weeks, she knew he was nervous as hell.

She was nervous, too. She wouldn’t let on; couldn’t afford to. This could all come to nothing, but it might turn out to be the moment she’d spent years waiting for. The beginning of her future. Her dad’s final moments called to her and played out in her mind, again and again, in all their flaming bloody violence. Her mother whispered a plea from years before, asking her to look after her father. But Jodi couldn’t let herself be distracted. She shut her parents out. Guilt had made her adept at doing that.

They circled around the side of the house, gravel crunching beneath their feet. There was a side entrance down a short flight of worn stone steps, but a heavy metal door had been bolted across the opening. BB had brought tools, but Jodi hoped they’d find an easier way inside. At the rear of the house a brick wall curved outwards and disappeared into a mass of overgrown rose and clematis, too deep and wide to penetrate. It looked like an old walled garden. BB cradled his hands and Jodi stepped in and boosted herself up, one hand on his shoulder, the other feeling cautiously across the wall’s head. No glass, no barbed wire, and beyond she saw an overgrown garden, large greenhouse and a wide glazed conservatory at the house’s rear. Most of the glass was smashed, and that which remained was whitewashed, but it looked like a way in.

“OK, up and over,” Jodi said. She hauled herself over the wall and waited while BB and Matt followed. They dropped beside her and the three of them stood staring at the rear façade of the old house. It had been grand once, and this large garden must have provided plenty of fresh fruit and vegetables. Plants had gone wild now, and a spread of knotweed had subsumed much of it.

They approached the conservatory. It was larger than Jodi’s old flat, and she peered through one of the smashed windows into the shadowy interior. She had to pop her torch from her pocket and shine it inside to make out any detail. It was a mess. Smashed glass littered the floor, along with a couple of old scrappy sleeping bags, crushed cans and the remains of a small fire contained by blackened and cracked bricks. A stained mattress slouched in one corner, rusted springs protruding. Some old wooden furniture remained, rotted down or smashed up. The place smelled musty but not rank, so whoever had been using it was long gone. Maybe it had been a bolthole for kids to drink and screw, or perhaps a shelter for a homeless person or people.

At the rear of the conservatory where it met the manor’s wall were three double-width doorways, each of them with metal sheeting bolted into the frames.

“Shit,” Jodi said.

“This is a job for BB and his claw,” Matt said.

BB shook his head. “I think this is a job for Mister Crowbar.” He handed Matt the hammer and took a crowbar from his backpack.

The conservatory’s outer door hung on rusted hinges, squealing as they pushed it open. It scraped across smashed glass and grit on the tiled floor, and Jodi stopped pushing as soon as the gap was wide enough for them to squeeze through. Something scrabbled in the mess, scampering away. She froze.

“I hate mice,” Matt said.

“That was no mouse,” BB said, voice low and laden with menace. “That was a rat, and a big one. Swallow a man whole.”

“Dickhead.”

BB picked his way to the nearest metal-sheeted door and started prying with the crowbar. The bolts were old and rusted, but they ground free of the wooden frame with ease. As he worked down the frame and pulled the door free of the wall, Jodi stood beside him and shone her torch inside.

“Oh, my God!” she gasped.

BB flinched back with the crowbar raised, and Jodi couldn’t keep a straight face. She bent over laughing, and heard Matt sniggering behind them both.

“Oh, yeah. Very good.”

“Get crowbarring,” she said, still chuckling.

“Hysterical. So funny.” The last bolt on one side came free with a screeeee, and Matt and BB grabbed the edge of the metal sheeting and pulled.

Jodi got a better look inside. A wide hallway with hardwood parquet flooring, timber wall panelling, a slumped water-stained ceiling and a swathe of spiderwebs right out of a horror film. Great. She hated spiders.

“Might be dangerous,” she said. “Matt should go first.”

“Of course he should.” Matt pulled out his own torch and picked up an old chair leg from the mess in the conservatory, using it to sweep aside webs as he slipped through the gap and inside. Jodi and BB followed, and they were in. They stood in a wide hall leading towards the front of the house, with several doorways opening up on one side. Most doors hung open, and Matt aimed his torch at the jambs and heads, and behind them at the opening leading out into the conservatory.

“No sign of any alarms,” he said.

Jodi took a deep breath. Musty, damp, the aroma of age and neglect. She wondered what this place had been like in its heyday and who had lived there, and there was sadness to the decay. She’d looked into the house’s history as part of her researching the hoard of valuables supposedly hidden away here, and had discovered that the building’s twentieth century had been traumatic. Owned by a local industrialist and landowner, three members of the family had gone away to war and never come home. That had set a rot in the place and those who lived there, which ended in the late seventies with a murder and suicide, inevitable stories of curses and hauntings, and claims of ownership so entangled in legalities and probate that eventually the place had faded away into history. Old black-and-white pre-war photos showed a grand building, imposing and homely at the same time, with wooden shutters, climbing plants softening harsh lines, and arched window and door surrounds presenting a characterful façade. It could have been beautiful again if someone had the money and inclination to make it so, but now it was probably too far gone to ever be restored to its former glory, and too damaged by events that had tainted it forever.

She wondered if there was anyone left alive who’d once walked these halls and rooms as a member or relative of the household, and whether their memories were good ones.

“Spooky as all fuckery,” BB said. “How did we never come into this place when we were kids?”

“We almost did,” Matt said. “It would’ve been a good dare, right?”

“All the stories said it was haunted,” BB said. “Remember when Darney said he was coming here, then he wasn’t in school for two weeks and rumour went round he’d broken in and was never seen again?”

“Yeah. He had chicken pox.”

BB froze, head tilted. “I hear rattling chains.”

Jodi rolled her eyes and started down the hallway. She flicked her torch back and forth, wishing that at least some of the front windows were uncovered to let in a sliver of natural light.

“Matt, you think any of the lights work?”

“Probably. But do you really think anyone’s paying an electric bill?” She heard a click-click as he flipped an old-style switch up and down. Nothing happened.

“Adds to the atmosphere,” BB said. “So where are we going, Lara Croft?”

“Study first. If not there, basement.” She set off along the hall, remembering the layout plans she’d found of Morgan Manor and trying to adapt those grainy old scans online to actually being here. Information about the alleged collection of valuables was vague – and talk of what she sought within the hoard was brief and even vaguer – but she’d found mention of it being contained in both places in the house. The study seemed very unlikely, because the building had been empty for decades and there had doubtless been intruders scouring the place for valuables in that time. The basement, less unlikely. Wherever, she didn’t expect an easy discovery. She was prepared to not find it at all. But she had to try.

“Great,” Matt said. “Basement.”

“You like basements,” BB said.

“I most certainly do not. Especially the basements of abandoned and dangerous buildings with dubious histories.”

“Ruth Bloom.”

“Huh?”

“She gave you a blowjob in Darney’s basement at his eighteenth birthday party.”

“That wasn’t a basement, it was a bedroom.”

“A bedroom beneath ground level with no windows.”

“A basement has rats and spiders and no lights and loads of old shit that’s been chucked down there over the years. That was a bedroom.”

“Because it had blowjobs?”

“Fuck you.”

“You still liked it, from what I remember.”

“In retrospect it wasn’t the worst party of my life.”

“Right. Ruth Bloom.”

“But it wasn’t a basement like this is going to be a basement.”

“One less blowjob?”

“Rats and spiders and shit.”

“You two,” Jodi said through a smile. Sometimes when they got bantering like this it was almost as if she wasn’t there, and she nudged aside the occasional sense of being excluded. They’d known each other forever, and there was so much history there that she didn’t know and never would. She loved BB, and loved Matt as a friend, and she was so grateful for both. She couldn’t tell them how grateful because that was complex and involved aspects of her own history that neither of them could ever know. So she hoped that love was enough.

“So, hey, Jodi,” BB said, “how about Matt checks the study and you and I, you know, maybe check out the basement.”

“No blowjobs,” she said.

“Not even if we find the loot?”

“Maybe then.” They’d reached the wide reception hallway. “Study’s over there, but check this out.”

“Woah,” Matt muttered, and they all swept their torches around the big space. They’d emerged from beneath a wide first-floor landing, and a staircase rose to meet it from the middle of the large vestibule. The ceiling here was double height, and the tall front doors were closed, bolted and sealed with metal straps and padlocks. It was heavy-duty security for an abandoned house, and made her more confident that there might be something here worth stealing.

“Where’s the suit of armour?” Matt asked.

“Walking slowly around darkened corridors, axe at the ready,” BB said.

Jodi aimed her torch past the foot of the staircase at a closed door.

Maybe it’s in there.

“So, er, you mentioned a curse?” Matt asked.

“Anyone who steals the loot turns into a slug,” BB said.

“Hauntings, curses, any old house like this that doesn’t have them isn’t worth looking at,” Jodi said. She hoped that would be enough for him. She had mentioned the curse in passing, and had no wish to elaborate.

They crossed the hall and she tried the study door. It squealed open to reveal a small room lined with bookshelves. The shelves were mostly empty, but a few books were piled here and there as if left behind in a hurry. There was no other furniture. Heavy internal shutters were closed across windows in two walls, and disturbed dust swirled within torch beams. One wall was marred with blown plaster and a swathe of damp, and the bare floorboards beneath were rotting away.

“Where are the crown jewels?” Matt asked.

“Hey,” BB said. He was standing close to one of the bookcase-lined walls, one hand resting on a small stack of mouldy books. “Ready?” He shifted a book. It dropped and fell apart, fanning loose pages across the floorboards.

Jodi glanced from BB to Matt and back again, eyebrow raised.

“Damn it,” BB said, scanning the shelves for movement. “No secret room.”

She aimed the torch around the floor and swept it back and forth along shelves, looking for anything that seemed out of place. The hoard would never have been left so exposed. If there was some sort of hidden compartment it might take them hours to find it.

“Let’s try the basement,” she said.

“Matt, start your Ruth Bloom-engine,” BB said.

“If we don’t find it there, we can come back and check the shelves.”

BB’s eyes went wide in honest excitement. “You mean there might be a secret room?”

“Cabinet, maybe,” she said. “Cubbyhole.”

“Cubbyhole?” Matt said. “The treasure I’m looking for will need something bigger than a fucking cubbyhole.”

They followed her from the room and along the side of the wide staircase. Further back was the kitchen and utility rooms, but she paused and started running her hands over the tongued-and-grooved dark timber cladding on the staircase’s side. A dado rail ran along the wall about a metre above the floor, and it seemed to be split in two places. She felt further. For a moment she thought there was nothing there at all, then she felt the horizontal seam in the timber boards, painted over several times yet still just noticeable through her fingertips. Between the vertical jointed boards there were also two small bolts, top and bottom, similarly covered in a layer of paint.

“Here,” she said. She smiled back at Matt and BB. “Secret door.”

“That’s what I’m talking about!” BB said, and he went at it with his crowbar. The joints were thick with old paint and the door itself was screwed into the timber surround, but with a couple of minutes’ effort the old wood started splintering around the screw heads.