The Annals of Fear

\'3pm and all is well.\' Matt typed into the messenger, which had been opened on one of his own laptops.



Matt heard Mello race into the room behind him, to where Deontic was just picking up the last of her bedding and Century was making up a flask of tea for the journey. Mello pointed excitedly towards the door. "Mr Roberts! Up on the mountain! Coming this way." His gaze took in the mattress still on the floor. "Don\'t let him come in here!"



Century knew his cue. He hurried past Mello, trailing the other three behind him. Mr Roberts was quite far up the slope, so Century raced around the stables to meet him. They heard Century call out, "Schmae! Bydda i\'n aros yma. Dwi\'n dysgu hanes y tŷ..." The rest was lost to the wind.



Matt could tell that Mello was anxious to be up there, despite not speaking the language. There was a certain restlessness about him, beyond the usual hyperactivity of his husband. It was probably due to having to relinquish control over his own case for a few minutes. It was also possibly annoyance at finding a language that he didn\'t speak. Matt moved beside the Slav. "Let him do it, Mell. This is partially the reason we got him down here." Beside them, Deontic had the boot of the BMW open and her folded quilt was stuffed into it. Matt glanced to ensure that she was watching, then pecked a kiss onto Mello\'s cheek. "Love you." He stated in a language that all could understand; specifically one that Deontic knew.



Mello surveyed him carefully. "Ah." He nodded. "It has got to you too. I\'ve been wondering, because you\'ve been so closed down it\'s hard to see inside. Your responses aren\'t normal for you in fear or anxiety, but that is largely the point."



"Huh?"



"For a start, you\'ve been doing a lot of ordering me around." Mello kept his eyes fixed on the animated conversation happening on the slope above them. Occasional words and phrases were snatched by the wind and reached them. They meant nothing to any of the trio listening. "Cuddling me, kissing me, telling me you love me. All very nice, but very out of character for you, cariño."



"Oh." Matt cast an anxious look at Deontic, but she was unreadable. It was as if daylight had reinstated them to themselves. "Not that out of character."



Mello snorted and gave him a look which said it all. Matt cringed inwardly. Deontic must have seen that too.







3.18pm and Century was back off the mountain, bustling inside after a cup of tea. He had made sure that the caretaker hadn\'t followed him down. They all congregated back around the kitchen table, perched on uncomfortable wooden stools. "He\'s not sure if he\'s employed here anymore." Century informed them. "He used to get a small dividend off the Protheros for keeping an eye on the place, but they laid him off as it was sold to us. Mr Prothero said he\'d put in a word, but Mr Roberts hasn\'t heard anything yet."



"But he\'s still got a key?" Mello asked, needlessly, as the man had to have been inside the house in order to leave them cake.



"Yes, but the Protheros never came up to take it off him. He\'s still been looking after the place until he knows what\'s what." Century unwrapped a lollipop and shoved it into his mouth. The ball of it bulged in his cheek. "I said that we\'d probably still need him, but I\'d speak to my parents about it. I let him believe that I was the son of the new family here."



Deontic poured water into their mugs. "It\'s not much of a lie. You are, in a manner of speaking."



Mello was impatient with the turn of this conversation. "Did he say anything about the haunting?"



Century nodded. "Just getting to that. Never anything all his life. I asked about the servant, said that you\'d told me, and he laughed. He said that his Nana had told him that the woman who saw that servant was a bit tapped in the head, see? He didn\'t think there was a ghost at all. All disappointed, I was, and told him so. Said here we were, with a nice house in Sir Ceredigion, finally made it in the world, and not even Mallt-y-Nos to bolster our name, is it?" Century paused for dramatic effect. "His face changed."



"There is a Mallt-y-Nos?" Mello demanded.



"You get the Mallt-y-Nos." Century sniffed. "There\'s just the one everywhere."



Mello spelt it out, as if talking to an idiot. "Is there a legend of one here?"



"Not historically no." Century sucked on his lollipop, not looking at Mello. "But there was talk after what happened to that band. Most people around here just think that they were all on drugs and did each other in, but there are a few old ones who are talking about Gwrach-y-Rhibyn. I asked him why, because that bit about the hideous woman wasn\'t common knowledge, was it, Mello?"



"No."



"He told me it was the injuries. Covered in scratches, he was, down by the river." Century took his tea, as Deontic passed it over. "Thank you, Dee. Sorry, I was making that, wasn\'t I?"



Deontic gestured for him to carry on with his report. "It\'s ok."



Century nodded. "But that wasn\'t the biggie."



"Hold on." Mello raised his hand. "Why would scratches indicate Gw... say it again."



Century emphasised it phonetically, "Gahr-ach ee Hree-bun. Gwrach-y-Rhibyn." He waited for Mello to repeat it several times, until he nodded. "Da iawn. Gwrach-y-Rhibyn does attack according to some legends. She flies down onto them and claws them with her talons, then pecks at them."



"Pecks?"



Century looked uncertain. "With her teeth perhaps?" His eyes flickered momentarily with self-irritation at his lack of knowledge on the fine detail.



Matt reached for the nearest laptop and searched for the entity. He had no idea how to spell it, but he gave it his best shot. Google corrected him and set him a list of links to follow. He read about her corpse-like features and bat wings. He found a story of a man, in the 19th century, who had slept in the ruins of Pennard Castle and had been left for dead by the being. It had mauled him with claws like an eagle\'s. He searched Pennard Castle and found that it was in Gower. He pulled up a map of Wales. Gower was miles away.



In the meantime, Century was going on. "Since then, Mr Roberts has sometimes seen lights on in here at night. They hear voices and music sometimes, then screams. He\'s on his final warning with the police, because he calls them and by the time they\'re here, all is quiet again. Mrs Roberts has stopped him going up on the mountain after dark, because it was becoming a bit of an obsession. There was a period when him and a couple of men from the tafarn would come down here to investigate, but they never caught anyone here. He thought it was kids at first, breaking in, see? But the doors are always locked." Century had all of their attention now. "Mrs Roberts came in one day to find all of the furniture pushed back in that room through there. Like it had been when the album was recorded. There\'s a woman down the village swears that she saw the Devil rise out of the roof, but Mr Roberts said that Mrs Pryce is like that and to take no notice. Oh! And there was a bloke, night fishing down by the river, looked up and saw someone on the roof. He had his hand on his heart saying it was Ioan Prothero."



"So," Mello fixed his gaze onto him, "in short, the house has gained a bit of a reputation of late."



"Mr Roberts described the band. He said they wore black and had Satanic symbols on them."



Matt interupted. "Says here that the Gwrach-y-Rhibyn only comes for pure blood Welsh. She\'s not interested in newcomers. We\'re safe then."



Century\'s mouth opened and closed. Mello frowned. "Why would she attack a Swede then?"



Century replied, annoyed, "I don\'t know. Find and interview her next, is it?"



"Perhaps she came for Ioan and the others got in her way." Deontic picked at invisible lint on her dress. "Are you really staying another night, Mello?"



"Yes." He replied, though he looked pensive about it.







3.51pm: Mello closed the gate behind the BMW and leaned upon it to wave Deontic and Century away. He waited to ensure that they had gone, then strode back along the driveway to where Matt was leaning against his own car. Matt hadn\'t wanted to come outside. Mello had insisted solely because he didn\'t want his husband in that house alone. "Hey." Matt watched Mello come close enough to gather him into his arms. They embraced and kissed long and deeply.



"So," Mello pulled away, "why was Deontic here?"



Matt shrugged, "Apparently sent by Hal to ambush Century." He gestured in the direction that the car had gone. "Probably bending his ear as we speak." He debated telling him the other reason, but what Mello didn\'t know couldn\'t hurt him.



"Heh." Mello smiled. "So Chrissie does trust me then."



"Mmm."









\'4pm and all is well.\' Matt typed, then added. \'C and D left ten minutes ago.\'



The response was immediate. \'Good\'.



Matt ignored her and turned instead to where Mello was checking his e-mails. He had asked Jörgen Åström for photographs of the band, as the internet appeared woefully lacking in them. "Any reply?"



Mello shook his head. "No. Nothing." He sat back chewing on his chocolate. "I\'ve got one from an Oleg Korotkykh, apparently in the Ukrainian NUNS. I\'ve been recommended by the Polish government for a case."



"Forward it to me." Matt replied airily, but Mello\'s delight was infectious and he had to smile. "Well done."



"Gracias." Mello rose and hugged Matt from behind, where he sat in his chair. "Reckon that Near has broken into the Ukraine?"



Matt sniffed. "I neither know or care." He opened his own e-mails, looking for one off Mello. "Have you forwarded it yet?" Mello shook his head, leaning in to kiss along Matt\'s jugular. Matt tilted his head to allow Mello better access. His neck was being sucked and there would be a lovebite. Matt\'s cock twitched in his jeans. There was an e-mail from Silver, one of his colleagues in the Elite Hackers\' Consortium. He opened it to distract himself from Mello\'s mauling. "Erm, Mell. Silver says that there are three different versions of the album on the internet."



"What?" Mello straightened and the loss of him was unwelcome. "Which one have we got?" He read the e-mail over Matt\'s shoulder. "So only one kills."



"He doesn\'t say that."



"It\'s obvious." Mello frowned. "Get all three, Mail." He stepped back, nibbling on his chocolate as he considered this new development. "Are they three mixes of the same recording? Or three separate recordings?"



Matt frowned. "How should I know? I\'ve only just found out that there were three. Wouldn\'t Jörgen Åström know? He was the one who made them available to the world in the first place."



Mello nodded. "I\'ll e-mail him." He crossed to his own laptop and there was a short silence, interspersed with typing, as Mello contacted the Swede. He sat back afterwards, thoughtfully staring at Matt.



"What?"



"Are you ok?" Mello asked, gently. Matt shrugged. There had been moments when he\'d been shaken, but there was nothing that going home wouldn\'t solve. He nodded. Mello\'s eyebrow ridge rose and he momentarily looked away. "I know you, Mail. There\'s this big wellspring of emotion deep inside you that you don\'t always acknowledge yourself. We both know how that can go wrong. We\'ve both been there. I was convinced last night that Deontic was going there too."



Matt raised his head to survey his husband. "Didn\'t we conclude that only the best people go mad? Then afterwards they can survive anything, because the worst already happened and they know that they did survive it. Deontic isn\'t going mad. She probably just had PMT or something."



Mello laughed. "Yeah."



Matt contemplated telling Mello what he\'d learned; that Deontic hadn\'t been there to watch over Century, she\'d been sent as a spy by Hal to evaluate Matt\'s wellbeing. Mello was staring pensively at the door into the sitting room though, his mind evidently lost in turning over the case. Matt figured that such information would just stress Mello out and maybe injure his friendship with Hal. In Matt\'s opinion, Hal could sometimes be a useful ally in getting information through Mello\'s insecurities and paranoia. She was worth retaining. "Why does it matter if they\'re remixes or separate recordings?"



Mello\'s attention snapped back towards him. "Because the latter implies that they were recorded at different times. I think that we\'ve been listening to a safe version, hence we\'re not suicidal." His shoulder rose in a half-shrug. "Maybe the dangerous copy is more rare."



Matt shook his head. "They are all apparently freely available on the internet. My guess is that the dodgy copy has worse sound quality or something. It gets fewer good reviews and therefore people tend to go for the other versions." He was still searching for it, whilst turning over the Deontic issue. He concluded that it really didn\'t matter that Mello knew. If Deontic was still here, then fine, because Matt had been following his own agenda. He had been showing the woman that he could look after himself. That might have been translated by Mello as a loss of control over his husband, but the blond wasn\'t freaking out over it. He was alright and Deontic was gone. "I\'ve asked Silver to look for the other versions too. I\'ve found about 20, but they\'re probably just the same one renamed by different people."



"Thanks, Mail."









4.37pm and the footsteps started on the floor above. Mello and Matt both froze, looking upwards. It sounded like more than one person this time. They both inspected the row of camera feeds, compressed into just two laptops, as they had been using the others. Though they displayed 90% of the area, including the room directly above them, there was nothing to see. Each room remained unpopulated with no apparent cause for the sounds they could both hear clearly. It grated on their nerves and they could do nothing else but listen.



"So, it\'s a ghost." Mello stated redundantly, through the noise of it. "The band recorded here because of a ghost. But that might have been Ioan Prothero just wanting to show off his beautiful house. They came here and got more than they bargained for. The house has been reputedly supernaturally active since. How did it go from one state to another? They did something while they were here."



Matt considered it. "Roberts said that they wore Satanic symbols."



"That could be anything. He\'s an old man. It could have been fashion." Mello nevertheless touched the rosary around his neck. He dashed back to his laptop and typed another e-mail to Jörgen Åström, asking if his cousin had been involved in devil worship or witchcraft. He hoped he\'d crouched it in diplomatic enough language. The footsteps went on.







\'5pm and we\'re mostly well. Bit of banging upstairs.\' Matt wrote.



The response came back a minute later. \'Good luck. Need anything?\'



Matt got the feeling that this was Salvo this time. \'No thank you.\' He typed and sent it.









5.08pm. Mello had found a bowl in one of the cupboards and filled it with water from the tap. He was dangling his rosary into it; the crucifix at the end dragged back and forth through the water. "U ime Oca i Sina i Duha Svetoga..."



Matt\'s stomach rumbled. "Why are you making holy water?"



"To bless the house." The footsteps still sounded overhead. They had not gone on for so long last night. "If they did do a Satanic ritual in here and opened up the spiritual door to something malignant, then claiming it back won\'t hurt."



"So you\'re going to sprinkle water all over the place." Matt stated. It wasn\'t a question.



Mello nodded. "Yes."



"Nowhere near my equipment please."



Mello smirked. He turned away from his bowl looking not at all in a state of Grace. "I thought we\'d already established that you\'re mine and therefore I can do what I like with your equipment."



Matt coloured slightly, a frisson of need passing through him. "Well yeah, but I draw the line at you saturating electrical stuff with water."



"Credit me with a bit of sense, Mail."









5.17pm and Matt was trailing behind Mello, carrying a bowl of water, through a house suddenly silent, but dense with expectation. It had almost been worse when the footsteps had stopped than when they had been running overhead. It implied that whomever or whatever had caused them was now standing still. Mello had his rosary wrapped around his hand, while the other clutched the figurine of Mother Mary. The effect was tempered somewhat by the fact that Mello swaggered like a street thug, drunk on testosterone.



Mello entered each room, never hesitating for fear of not having the courage to open the door, and stood in its centre. Matt moved before the camera tripods, where they were present, so that any holy water would hit him rather than it. Mello reached back with his rosary enshrouded hand and dipped gloved fingers into the bowl. "U ime Oca i Sina i Duha Svetoga, Bog te blagoslovio!" He stated with gusto, making the sign of the cross with water flying off his sodden glove. Then he walked along each wall, sprinkling water over the carpet and skirting boards, stopping only at the windows to bless them too. Matt strongly suspected that Mello was making this up as he went along, but it was Catholic stuff, so he let him get on with it.



To be fair, the house did feel much calmer afterwards. Matt also felt much happier for having done another thorough search of it; happier still when that was over and they were back in the kitchen.









5.52pm. Matt had boiled them both a couple of eggs with toasted bread to dip into the yolk. They sat at the kitchen table to eat them, as a ping sounded from one of the laptops. Matt investigated. "Woot! I\'ve got one of the other versions of the album."



"Took you long enough." Mello replied. "What\'s the use in being married to a geek, when it takes you how many hours to download music?"



Matt bristled inwardly, but remained outwardly calm. "I had to find it first. Then I got caught up in your blessing rites. And cooked food."



Mello grinned. "Thank you for finding the album, Mail."



"De nada." He noticed that neither of them were precisely rushing to listen to it. On further reflection, he decided that he really didn\'t want to. "Still looking for the third."



"Thanks." Mello munched through a spoonful of egg, reading about Gwrach-y-Rhibyn on the internet. Upstairs, there was a sudden series of crashes and every camera feed went dead. "Fuck."



Matt had just taken a bite of toast. It rested as half-chewed cardboard on his tongue.







6.04pm, Mello rushed to the laptop to type, \'Sorry! Sorry! We\'re here. All of the camera leads were pulled out. We\'ve been upstairs putting them back in.\' He had no idea why he had just typed all of that to Salvo and Chrissie. It had to be the adrenaline. He sent it anyway and careered back into the sitting room. Matt was in there, reconnecting that camera too. One by one, the feeds had all come back on-line.









6.43pm and they had just sat down again to contemplate cold egg and soldiers, when they heard a vehicle arriving in the yard. Mello checked the time. "Thank you, Hal." Only three hours between request and delivery. Matt followed him out, then took over checking all of the extra cameras, tripods, heat sensors, EMF meters, EVP recorders and ion counters. Mello took custody of the box full of chocolate bars instead.



Along with the courier, they conveyed all of the boxes inside before signing for them. Matt looked at them with a mixture of glee and deflation. Now they would have to walk all over the house for a third time, setting it all up. He needed food before he did any of that.







6.54pm. Matt looked up from his investigation of the pantry, having already eaten several pieces of Bara Brith. It sounded as if the courier was back. Mello\'s chair scraped back, as he rose to look. "What!" Mello exclaimed, so Matt ran back into the kitchen to see. It was Deontic\'s car and both she and Century were climbing out of it. "Why are they back? They\'re after the kudos and it\'s my case!"



"I don\'t know, but I hope they brought pizza." Matt replied, hopefully.



They did have carrier bags and a large blow up mattress. Deontic eyed Mello with an expression of resignation. "We discussed it and we couldn\'t just leave you here. I\'ve brought what passes for Cantonese food in Aberystwyth."



Matt grinned at her and held the door open for her to bring the food inside. He wasn\'t sure how he felt about their return, but he was very certain about his feelings towards the take-away. Century followed. "I\'ve bought all the books on local legends and folklore; and been asking around in the shops. We found a woman in a cafe on the seafront, whose auntie lives this way on. Says she\'s heard the music and howling in the night too."



"Anything new to add?" Mello asked.



"Only that we found someone down there whose friend committed suicide after hearing the album."



"Oh good!" Mello smiled, "Can we have a copy of that version?"







7pm. Matt typed, \'C and D are back. Sorry.\' The only response was the ringing of Century\'s \'phone half a minute later. Matt let him deal with Chrissie. He had food.