The Annals of Fear

"Shit, that\'s her." Mello commented, standing beside the kitchen table, staring at his laptop. He had only meant to be passing through, but the sight of the computer had reminded him about his e-mails. Deontic looked up at him. She had been sitting alone in here, trying to find patterns to their socio-emotional responses whilst in the house. "I\'ve had an e-mail from my contact in Sweden. One who knew the band. He\'s sent me a picture of them." He waited until she slipped off the stool and came to see. "That\'s the ghost I saw up on the floor above. Maja Gustafsson. She was the singer."



Deontic stared at it. "They are all wearing a lot of black. Where they aiming for the Gothic look? Or just to seem a little...." She faltered, her gaze passing from the screen to Mello himself. He was a man who was usually clad in black.



"Maybe they just like the colour." Mello\'s expression remained deadpan.



"You are positive that it\'s her?"



Mello rested his hands on the table, leaning in closer. "Yes, positive. Matt could pick her out of a line up, if you want the evidence."



"I believe you." Deontic moved away from him, walking along the length of the table to inspect the camera feeds again. The laptops had been moved into the kitchen and she was in charge of them, while her three companions laid lengths of cable. By the time they were finished, Matt promised that nothing could move in this house, from this world or the next, without something picking it up. She paused by the sight of Matt and Century working on the top floor. They had re-opened the attic door. Mello was planning on fixing cameras and sensors up on the roof itself. "So our ghost is the singer from the band." She considered it. "Did she have anything particularly against your Goddess?"



"My what?" Mello followed her gaze towards his figurine of Mother Mary. "Oh." He gestured impatience and returned to his e-mail. "Not remixes. Right." His skim-read over, he returned to the beginning to read it properly. "Just reading this." There was a pause. "Yes, they all had an interest in the occult. Low level stuff, though they had been messing with ouija boards. Nothing very organised though. He denies actual devil worship." Mello picked up his chocolate and mused on the new information. "Two of them came from the Swedish Bible belt..."



"Sweden has a Bible belt?" Deontic leaned in to check some footage, but it was only a shadow. "Are you sure? I thought that a very secular country."



Mello nodded. "It\'s hardly at the level of the Bible belt in the USA, but nevertheless it exists. Which meant that Jan and Rasmus\'s exposure to the hereafter was probably primarily Christian. We can say the same about the two Welsh men. The woman came from nearer to Stockholm."



"You\'re a Christian yourself. Your thoughts pass more quickly to Christianity than any other belief system."



Mello\'s eyes flickered into her direction. "I\'m corrupting my interpretation of the evidence with my personal bias?"



Deontic gave him a long, hard look. "No. Your reasoning is sound. Carry on."



"My theory is..."



"Mello." Deontic stared at him across the table and Mello\'s heart leapt. "No, there\'s nothing behind you. I just wanted to say that your reasoning is generally sound. You have an amazing brain and it always impressed me. If the marking procedures at Wammy\'s House were not so flawed, you would have beaten Near more often. I apologise if I ever made you feel like second best." That speech delivered, she returned to surveying the screens, though she was watching him still. Mello looked suddenly a lot younger and smaller. A coy smile played upon his face. Deontic took all of this in. This had been what Matt had wanted her to work out. Mello seemed to remember himself and his eyes hardened again. She noted it and asked, "What is your theory?"



Mello smiled at her, though his gaze was tinged with suspicion now. "That was really nice of you to say that. Thank you."



"Your theory."



"Yes." He stood back, collecting his thoughts together again. "Consider their thought processes. They want something mysterious and dark, yes, but they are fundamentally immature."



"How do we know that?"



"I\'m basing it on their ages. They were our age, more or less." Mello shrugged. "We\'re immature."



Deontic gave a half-shrug. "Some of us are."



Mello ignored her. "Ioan Prothero\'s family is rich. They have property all over south and west Wales, as well as a townhouse in London and a holiday home in Marbella. They have this old manor house up in the Cambrian Mountains, which, of course, the family don\'t live in. They\'re down in Cardiff, where the action is. Ioan\'s out to impress. He spins up a good story, enough to entice three Swedes across the sea into this desolate hole." He raised a gloved finger. "But nothing happens. It\'s not nearly as haunted as he made out. It has atmosphere and elements, but it remains completely supernaturally boring. They\'re all young, they\'re in a band. A Death Metal band. They\'re used to Cardiff, Stockholm and Edinburgh. Big cities. What are they doing up here in the countryside? You look out of the window and all you have is rural land. Young people tend to go a bit stir-crazy. I\'ve seen it. Holed up in some of the dives that I was in. You\'d have Young Turks flying miles just for a night out."



"You\'re making a lot of suppositions, but nothing I contest so far."



"Thank you." Mello paced along the kitchen. "So they need to make their own entertainment. Maybe there were drugs involved. Possibly alcohol. I haven\'t heard that they were tee-total and Mr Roberts certainly thought them on drugs."



"Unfounded allegation. They looked fashionable within their genre and it was outside his world view. He naturally assumed drugs."



Mello gestured that it didn\'t matter. "They have an interest in the occult. That\'s why they\'re here. They wanted to make an album in a haunted house. They came looking for supernatural adventure. They had a history of dabbling in things like ouija boards. They probably did something. A ritual, a rite, something that opened up the spiritual airwaves to all comers." He paced to the line of laptops and stood beside Deontic. "Why is that room unfurnished? The one that Maja walked into? All of the others have furniture. The family sold it wholesale, after they\'d removed their personal effects." He paused. "Yeah and probably the valuable antiques too. We\'ve got an historian with us and he\'s been ooohing and ahhing over stuff, but he hasn\'t once picked something up and had us rushing to Sotherby\'s, has he?"



Deontic touched the screens, pointing at the rooms either side of the empty one. "They are both bedrooms. It makes sense that this was one too. You wouldn\'t put a storage room there." They exchanged glances. "So the furniture in there was damaged or valuable antiques..."



"Yeah, but they even took the carpet." Mello grinned smugly. "Which errs towards damaged. All of the other rooms have the same fitted carpet. It\'s been cut away at the threshold of the door here." His earpiece crackled into life and Mello pulled the microphone down. "Yes Matt?"



"What are you doing down there?"



"Solving the case, why?"



Matt\'s tone held a note of reproach. "Century and I have finished this floor. Want us to carry on into the attic or did you want to be here for that one?"



Mello hesitated. "Anything happening up there?"



"Yeah." Matt replied bluntly. "Century and I are doing all of the work, while you scive off."



Mello laughed. "Sorry, Matt. I will be up soon. Let me just work this lot out. It\'s all coming together in my mind."



"No problem."



"Come down for a teabreak."



There was some muffled conversation. Matt had to be holding the little microphone inside his hand. He let go to speak again. "No, we\'re going to finish the attic, so that when we come down, it will be for good."



Mello was torn between going and staying. He opted for the latter. "I\'ll be up in five minutes. Carry on." The static stopped. Matt had switched the microphone off his end. "Ouch. I\'m not in his good books."



Deontic wasn\'t interested in that. She had maximised the footage from the room in question. "It was the same carpet. You can see where it\'s had the carpet cutters on it. The rest of the house has the edges nicely fitted, but that\'s rough. I concur that the carpet was damaged." She drummed her fingers on the tabletop. "None of them died actually in the house. Ioan fell from the roof, but the others were clear of the house completely. That was not, therefore, a crime scene."



"Was it not?" Mello stepped back, animated. "We know where their bodies were found, not where they died. Though forensics did say that Jan Pettersson died where he lay."



"Why were they so scattered?" Deontic asked.



"Huh?"



"Three different places. Ok, the other two fled in a car, but the first three must have fled too."



Mello gasped. "Ioan went upstairs. Maja and Jan ran towards the river. Rasmus and Mihael..."



"Michael."



"Sorry, yes." Mello laughed. A smile flickered across Deontic\'s lips and Mello laughed more. "It\'s a common enough name."



She nodded. "It is reasonable to suppose that their starting point, if they were all together, was the house. Were they chased?"



"Why do you say that?"



Deontic held out her hands, palms upward, like she was trying to gage the weight of something in the air. "Their running patterns seem off. Right now, if something happened to make you and I want to flee, would we go in different directions?"



"Yes." Mello replied. "Because I would go upstairs and get my man. You would probably run to the car." He rushed back to his own laptop, where the photograph of the band was still displayed. "Jan and Maja were a couple. They would have run together. Rasmus was not only a fellow Swede, which implies solidarity, but also Jan\'s friend. He would have gone with them. I would expect Ioan and Michael to have gravitated towards one another too. They\'re both Welsh and also friends. That said, Ioan and Jan were friends too, from University." He stared at the screen, trying to divine knowledge from their eyes. The solution felt so close that he could almost taste it. He raised his chocolate and held a corner of it between his teeth. His reward for solving this would be a bite.



The sudden rat-a-tat of running footsteps, up above, took them by surprise. Mello bit into his chocolate out of sheer shock. Deontic\'s hand covered her mouth, but she looked to the screens first, though instinct would have had her raise her eyes towards the ceiling. "I can\'t see anything." She stated, cool professionalism keeping the fear from her tone.



"Mother of God, it\'s cut us off."



"What?"



Mello started running to the inner door. "It\'s between me and Matt!"



Deontic realised that she was being left alone in here. She hurried after Mello, but he was much faster than she was. She pulled down the microphone on her own headset, as she ran. "Century, Matt, are you reading me?"



"Yes." They both said at once. Century continued. "We can hear it. It\'s on the floor below."



"No." Deontic had reached the top of the first staircase. It was all around her and Mello had already run through it. She glimpsed him heading into the enclosed second staircase. Deontic huddled into herself, closed her eyes to mere slits and took off after him. "It\'s here. My floor."



There were awed whispers. A short expletive from Matt. Century whispered, "There\'s someone coming up the ladder."



"It\'s Mello." Deontic assured them. She felt the chi so strongly here, as if she ran alongside someone. It was icy cold. "Keep talking to me!"



"It\'s not Mello." Century breathed. "Dewi..."



Matt interjected. "This is Mello now. Mello\'s with us, Dee."



Deontic reached the top landing, close to tears, the rushing sensation all around her and the footsteps loud in her ears. A figure leapt down from the attic and she nearly screamed, but it was Century. He gasped out, "Something came through before Mello did. Someone ran past us! It went out onto the roof!"



Deontic held onto his arm and she didn\'t care whether that looked like comfort for herself or him. "Why are we standing in the middle of this?" She scrambled up the ladder with Century right behind her. She was expecting to find that Mello was already on the roof, in pursuit of whatever ghosts were streaming past them. She had her reprimand all ready to yell at him. It startled her, therefore, into a shriek, to find Mello still standing there, his hands cupping Matt\'s chin.



"I told you." Mello was saying, low enough to be private, but emphatic enough that his words carried to those arriving. "I will always come for you, Mail. I will never leave you anywhere. I will always come for you." Matt\'s gloved hands rose behind Mello\'s back, palms flat against it. In the slipstream of that infernal noise and the still racing footsteps echoing in endless repetition across the floor, Matt and Mello kissed. As terrified as they were, Deontic and Century knew to hang back, to watch this from afar. There was clearly a Moment passing between the couple. They didn\'t have to wait long. Mello drew away and hugged him once. "Mi niño pelirrojo." He smiled, then patted Matt\'s back and dashed away to that last wall-mounted ladder, up to the sky.



"Mello!" Deontic yelled, with all the authority that she could muster. Mello didn\'t even look back; Matt did, but with a smirk. Even Century released his grip on her arm and ran across to the ladder. Deontic was left to groan impotently, "Don\'t go up there."



It was too late, Mello was already through the exit, wind howling past him and chilling them all. Matt just beat Century to the ladder, but they both climbed up after the Slav. Deontic whimpered and jogged after them. There was only a small platform upon which to stand, so they crowded upon it. The rest of the roof wasn\'t meant for anyone but stevedores and birds. The inadequacy of the battlements was even more in evidence here than when viewed from below. There were even small guttering gaps at strategic points through them. "Ornamental." Century declared. "Mid-Victorian folly."



Mello had Matt\'s hand, but his attention was on the rest of the roof. "He must have gone over from here."



Matt leaned forward to peer over the battlement. Mello tightened his grip on his husband\'s hand. Matt concurred. "Yes, that looks about right for falling onto the cobblestones in the yard."



"And, of course," Century added, "he\'s still doing it."



Deontic froze on the spot, her eyes tightly closed. "Why did someone have to say it!"