The Annals of Fear

"Are you ok?" Deontic asked, hearing Century walk into the kitchen behind her. He had been following her around like a sheepdog. At his noncommital grunt, she glanced up from the tea that she was brewing. Century was standing against the door, with his arms still wrapped around him and a lollipop sticking out of his mouth. "I can drive you out of here. We don\'t have to stay."



Century nodded. "To be honest, I\'m interested in the case." He stared at the floor, white-faced and miserable. "It should have been my case. I don\'t know why it was given to Mello."



"I wish I could defend you more." Deontic bit her lip and returned to stirring teabags in the big, yellow teapot. "Nathalie could have done this. Nathalie would have had him calmed right down." Century snorted in derision, evidently not sharing her view. Deontic stiffened, but bowed her head over her task. "I miss her."



"Yeah." Century replied, which could have meant anything. "Why are you here?"



Deontic wiped her eyes with a finger. "I have my own case."



"Oh?" Century asked, but she turned away, grabbing a couple of squares of kitchen roll. He took a couple of steps towards her, but Deontic scurried into the corner. Her whole stance screamed that she did not want to be approached or touched. Awkwardness hung in the air. "Yeah, Nat would have given him a run for his money." Century conceded quietly. He glanced back through into the other room. Mello was sitting on an armchair, eating chocolate with a vengeance. Matt was perched on the arm of the same chair, his legs crossing Mello to rest against the other arm. Their heads were bent together in whispered conversation. "You never used to cry, Dee."



"No." She squeaked, blowing her nose. "Sorry." Her hand flailed in the air in warding, then she gathered herself together and returned to the tea making. Century pretended not to notice that her eyes were red-rimmed under her glasses. "Did you notice that Matt\'s jaw is bruised?"



Century nodded. "Didn\'t we go through that during that meeting at Wammy\'s House?"



Deontic gave a half-shrug. "And what was Chrissie\'s private view about it?"



"I wouldn\'t know." Century smirked. "Private, it is, see?" He watched her carefully. "So you\'re not here for me. You\'re here for Matt."



Deontic looked blank. "I\'m here because Hal asked me to be here." She poured three mugs of tea. Mello had declined the offer of one. "I wish you would give Hal a chance. She\'s a good woman." When he didn\'t reply, Deontic glanced at him again. "You know what I see when I look at you, Century?"



"I dread to think."



"A normal 17 year old boy." Deontic replied decisively. "Well, compared with the rest of us anyway. Maybe it was because you were the baby. The rest of us lived out our own desires for a childhood in you. Protected you as much as we could. Chrissie and Salvo? I think their last great rebellion against the system was ensuring that you weren\'t in it. But Hal, she\'s trying to change all of that. She\'s trying to give them childhoods. Yes, the work is challenging. It has to be. They\'re all geniuses and they would be otherwise bored stupid. But it\'s not the pressure that we had. Wammy\'s House is finally starting to work and that\'s all down to Hal."



Century took the lollipop from his mouth and inspected it. "No doubt the view in our house will lighten considerably towards Hal after Sept 2nd."



"But that\'s just it! Can you not see what she\'s doing" Deontic held out a cup of tea. "Wait here, I\'m just going to give this to Matt." She hurried the second mug through. "Matt."



The redhead took it. "Terima kasih."



"Oh!" Deontic blinked, startled by the thanks given in her native Malay.



Mello raised his head. "Are you and Century staying?"



She squared her shoulders. "I don\'t know yet." Deontic didn\'t bother asking how he knew that they were considering leaving. It was an obvious conclusion. She indicated the three laptops on the floor, each providing extended views throughout the house. "Has anything else happened?"



They both shook their heads. Mello continued, slightly subdued, "The case isn\'t about a haunted house by the way. People died here last year. Three men and a woman recorded an album in this house and the album is causing deaths still."



Deontic nodded. "I read the casefile."



"Oh. You did." Mello narrowed his eyes, as he considered it. "That saves time, I suppose."



"So what are you looking for precisely?" Deontic asked, aware that Century had wandered back into the room. She dismissed the annoyance that she felt at that. There was still time to finish her conversation with him. "I\'m only aware of the case until it was handed to you. I don\'t know what you have discovered since."



Mello looked smug, his eyes communicating very well that that was his business and she could go on wondering. Then he stretched, languidly, and surveyed them both. "Ok, sit down. I owe you. I\'ve acted appallingly and so I\'ll give you something."



Deontic nodded, "Let me get my tea." She hurried into the kitchen, returning with it. She noted that Century waited for her before they both took their places on the settee. "If I can be of assistance, I will be."



"Why?" Mello asked as he patted Matt\'s legs. The redhead moved them. He still sat on the arm of the chair, but now his feet were on the floor. A PSP emerged from his pocket and he switched it on. As an afterthought, Matt rose and sat on the floor, his back against Mello\'s left leg. Mello casually stroked Matt\'s hair. Deontic and Century watched the whole tableau with growing unease, but Deontic hadn\'t responded. Mello smiled. "Quite comfortable there, Matty?"



"Yep."



"Good." Mello\'s fingers continued to rake through his husband\'s red hair, but his attention was firmly on the other two. "Why are you offering assistance, Dee? Have you seen the price tag on this case?"



"Yes." She stared back unflinchingly. "Nevertheless, it interests me now that I am here."



"Nevertheless?" Mello didn\'t blink. "Surely you missed out a whole sentence of explanation there."



Deontic rolled her eyes. "Because the explanation was obvious. It will cause unnecessary conflict to attempt to take a case from you. I, at least, learned the lessons of Lamond and Hollow and all those who died, because of our civil wars. Families do not always see eye to eye, but I wish to cultivate the spark of the idea that you three are my foster brothers. Surely I made that clear in Greece?"



Mello nodded, giving her a long appraising look before speaking. "Two strands to this case, though they are interlinked. The first is that five people recorded an album in this house. All five were dead within fifteen hours. Three died in this house. A fourth died a couple of hours after leaving it and the fifth survived for fifteen hours. Our information is that something supernatural attacked them whilst they were here. Furthermore, that something supernatural was recorded onto the album. We\'re talking about an auditory sound, obviously." He paused. "That is strand one. That is what we\'re here to investigate at the moment."



Deontic nodded mutely. Century pulled the stick out of his lollipop and dropped it into his pocket. He prompted, quietly, "And what about strand two?"



"Is my business." Mello smirked. "This supernatural creature is described as a hideous woman with dogs. Tell us about Mallt-y-Nos, Century."



Century surveyed him blankly for a moment, all emotion locked away now. He was still pale, but a half-smile gradually grew to play upon his lips. "Nice pronunciation. Da iawn." Across the rug, Mello inclined his head at the compliment. Century noted that Mello was very quickly picking up phrases in Welsh. Century wasn\'t sure whether to be pleased or worried. "Mallt-y-Nos is a hag. She rides the night with a fiercesome cry and all who hear it know that something bad is coming. Death or grave misfortune."



"Like the banshee?" Mello asked.



Century winced. "Similar, but not quite. You\'re delving into a whole genre of night hags here. The bean sidhe," he enunciated the Gaelic effortlessly, "isn\'t ours. She belongs to the Irish. But we have a host of them. Mallt-y-Nos, Cyhiraeth, Gwrach-y-Rhibyn..." He blinked. "Oh."



Mello\'s gaze pinned him to his chair. "Oh what?"



"Gwrach-y-Rhibyn is a Cardi as well."



"What\'s a Cardi?"



Century gestured to take in the whole room. "Sir Ceredigion. The county."



"Ah." Matt smiled from the floor. "Cardiganshire."



"Cer i grafi." Century bristled. "Dyma Sir Ceredigion."



Mello lightly kicked Matt\'s back. "Stop winding him up." He flicked back his hair. "I\'ve done enough of that for the pair of us this evening." He smiled at Century. "Tell us about these beings and why they\'re different to a banshee."



Century rose and walked across to this rucksack. They all watched his progress, but he was only finding a bag of lollipops from the side pocket. He extracted one and carried it with him back to the settee. "The Bean Sidhe, or Bean-shìdh if you\'re Scottish, belongs to the Gaels. Fenian\'s lot. She tends to attach herself to families, often the nobility, and is usually heard rather than seen. She wails in the woods when someone is about to die in that family. She\'s not always a hag. Sometimes she\'s a beautiful woman, or an animal. Usually one connected with the Morrighan for obvious reasons."



Mello\'s eyebrows rose. "Do we need to know about Morrighan?"



"No." Century smirked. "But back to Cymru. Ours are much more vicious. Cyhiraeth is probably the safest. She\'s very close to the Bean Sidhe. Disembodied voice. Mourning a soon-to-be-dead person. All that." He shrugged, wishing to move onto his two strongest suspects. "Mallt-y-Nos, Mallt of the Night, has the hounds. Specifically, she rides with the hounds, as they don\'t belong to her. Cŵn Annwn, they are, but we\'re a bit south for them. They\'re up on Cadair Idris, see? They take the souls of the dead to Annwn, so their barking coming towards you is a bit of a bad sign." He laughed without mirth. "Oh! Annwn is the Otherworld. You\'d call it Heaven." Century sucked on his lollipop. "You hear them loud when they\'re far away, getting quieter as they come near. The barking. But with them, sometimes, is Mallt-y-Nos and she\'s an evil cow. It\'s malicious with her, see? She\'s egging them on, wanting the dead, and she\'s screaming and wailing, baying for blood. A wild hunt."



"Do you have to die if you\'ve heard her?" Mello asked.



Deontic and Matt both turned incredulous looks at him, but Mello had once met a shinigami and so he kept his options open. Century considered the question. "I suppose so, yes, but whether she is the cause is debatable. After all, she is with the Cŵn Annwn and they are coming for those about to die. Mallt-y-Nos just takes great enjoyment in the fact." He frowned. "Though it\'s a bit hard to prove, isn\'t it? I mean, if she maliciously killed them, then the dogs would be coming. The fact that they all turn up together might be coincidental."



"Mallt-y-Nos..." Mello began, pondering the suspect, but stopped as Matt gasped. "What?"



Matt nodded towards one of the laptops. "The Mother\'s moved again."



There was a creaking of leather as Mello bent forward to see. The small table, beside the bed that they had claimed for their own, was empty of all but a lamp sitting on a laced doilly. His gaze moved over the other screens. "Where has it gone?"



Deontic moved to the side of the armchair, while Century stood behind it. All four inspected the screens, conceding a minute later than none could see the figurine of the Virgin Mary. There was a camera now on the staircase. The figurine wasn\'t there. Matt clicked to multiply the feeds onto the other laptops, as he picked up one. He looped back through the history to find when the figurine had been taken. His companions exchanged nervous glances, their vision drawn back to the stairs. Century muttered. "We\'re not alone." And they all span to follow the direction of his view "No, I mean that someone is obviously here moving things."



"Whoa!" Matt exclaimed. "How the...?" He watched the footage again. Mother Mary stood solidly on the table beside the bed. A moment later, it simply wasn\'t there anymore. It was as if they were watching edited film, where the continuity clerk had failed. He rewound it six times before all four of them were satisfied that they had seen the same thing. There was no jump in the feed. The timer continued on unabashed.



Mello\'s eyes were huge. "Theories anyone?"



"Looks like a ghost to me." Century proffered. Neither Deontic or Matt had anything to add, though Matt kept on rewinding the footage and watching it over and over again.



Mello was clutching his rosary in a gloved fist. "Does Mallt-y-Nos haunt houses like this?"



"No." Century gulped. "None of them do. They\'re more outside creatures, see?" He pointed towards the laptop. "Are you actually going to sleep in that bed tonight?"



Matt shook his head before Mello had a change to reply. "I\'m checking the camera though." Matt started to rise, but Mello pushed him back down again. "Huh?"



"Century, you said \'oh\' over that other being. Gwack ribbon?"



"Gwrach-y-Rhibyn." Century moved around the armchair, suddenly keenly aware that his back was exposed. "She doesn\'t haunt houses either. She\'s the hag of the mist. Crossroads, rivers, streams, sort of thing. Ugly as sin, that one, and she can fly on bat\'s wings, scratching at windows and wailing the name of the person about to die." The sound of the river, running outside, had faded into the background, but they all heard it now. "Only she doesn\'t have the hounds. Hence me thinking of Mallt-y-Nos."



Mello stared unblinkingly at him. "The dogs that come when someone dies? Those dogs?"



Century bit his lip. "Yes."



"Well then."