The Annals of Fear

The kitchen felt like an oasis of peace. The door could be shut and electric light illuminated every corner. The sound of the kettle boiling almost blocked out the battering of the footsteps on the floor above. Matt bowed down, his hands on his knees, while he recaptured his breath. Century busied himself with the preparation of cups of tea. Deontic scurried to the sink, because she thought she was going to throw up, but she didn\'t. Mello loitered behind Matt, his eyes on the laptop camera feeds, his hand on his husband\'s back. They had not so much run as hurtled down stairs and corridors, from the top of the house back to this spot.



"Croeso y Gymru." Century muttered, forlornly. "How are you enjoying my country so far?" There was no response. He surveyed them all in turn. "How is everyone doing?"



Deontic turned away from the sink. "I\'ve got stitch." She looked at Mello. "Anything happening?"



"Yeah." Mello replied. "The ghost of Ioan Prothero is running to the roof over and over again."



"Just one?" Century frowned. "It sounds like a herd of them."



Mello shook his head. "Listen carefully. It\'s just one tread. It\'s overlaid upon itself, in a loop. But it\'s just one. People run at different speeds and their weight and fitness mean that their footsteps vary. Didn\'t you listen to us coming down?"



"No. I was too busy running."



Matt stood up, then walked across to sit on a stool. He lit a cigarette. Mello took that as his cue to pace again. "I\'m so close. I almost know what happened here. I just need to solve the puzzle."



"Not if I solve it first." Century countered. Mello glared, but Century was only articulating what everyone in that room was thinking.



Mello\'s smile wasn\'t polite. "Heh. See you at the finishing line. I\'ll be waiting."



Matt blew out a cloud of smoke. "Count me out."



"What?" Mello turned on him.



"If this is turning into another version of Wammy\'s House, count me out." He took another deep drag. "I did my time in Deduction Class."



Century was unconvinced. "Count you out? Really?"



Deontic rushed to stand beside Matt and inspect the monitors. "Mello and I were so close to working this out, when the noise started."



"We were?" Mello snapped, incredulous at her presumption. "I was!"



Century stared, "You pair have been working together?"



Matt groaned, his hands coming up behind his head, which bowed down to the tabletop. His cigarette burned between his fingers. His words came out as a growling moan, "No importa!"



"What doesn\'t?" Mello bristled. "Us in competition? Yes it does! If they are here in a futile attempt to take my case off me, then trust me, it matters!"



"I do trust you." Matt hissed, sitting up again. "There! I answered to the fucking name! You got a victory! Now can we look at the bigger case all together?"



Mello blinked, startled. "I didn\'t mean it like that! I wasn\'t saying \'it matters\' as a noun, I was stating it. The \'trust me\' was a conditional...." He faltered. "Come on, Matt, you knew that. Some things have amibiguity in the English language. You knew that..."



Deontic raised her hands. "Stop it!" Her hands flailed in the air. "It\'s happening again! It\'s under our skin and in our minds! Why are we suddenly arguing? We were working together before. We were pooling resources. We just went upstairs together!" Her gaze stopped at Mello. "I didn\'t flee to my car. I came with you."



Mello deflated a little, picking up his chocolate and sitting down. Matt reached for his PSP. Century made the tea. Deontic just swallowed and sat down too. The silence hung heavy in the air, punctuated only by the incessant running above their heads. Century eventually sighed. "Is that what the pad full of conditional obligation formulas is all about? You working out what this place is doing to our minds?"



"Yes." Deontic replied. There was another short silence. "How did you know that?"



"It\'s obvious." Century handed out their cups of tea and planted the sugar bowl in the middle. "Mello takes the overview and develops strategy. I look at the history. Matt deals with the technical stuff. You focus on the abstracts - the responses, reactions, permissions. We focus on what our obsessions are."



She shrugged. She would give him that. Mello exhaled loudly. He coughed and straightened a little. "Back to Century\'s initial question. Is everyone alright?"



"No." Deontic sniffed. "I\'m scared to death and my origami paper is in the other room."



Century slid her notepad down the table towards her. "Paper."



Mello took a small bite of chocolate. "Let me tell you where I got to." He quickly appraised Matt and Century of the earlier conversation, before the reinstatement of activity upstairs had interrupted their flow. "I\'m leaning towards there having been a ritual of some kind in the room upstairs, which damaged the furniture and carpet."



"No." Matt paused his game. "How about we think of that room as the place where the album was recorded?"



"Explain."



"They took out the furniture because it was dampening the sound. Plus they needed to fit themselves and all of their instruments in there. That included a drumkit." He nodded towards the inner door. "That always bothered me about your information that they recorded it in there. The room is too big with so much furniture in it. Sound would just die. Having said that it would be really echo-y in an empty bedroom. To be honest, none of these rooms are great for recording music in."



Mello stared at him. "Fucking Hell, Matt, why didn\'t I think of that?" The chocolate became static between his teeth for a moment, then Mello grinned and bit through it. "Yes!" He leapt off his stool and paced as he spoke, eyes shining with the solution. "That\'s what they\'ve been trying to tell us all along! The footsteps, they\'re happening on that floor, have we checked to see if they start from that room?"



Deontic shook her head. "It\'s too hard to tell. It\'s on a layered loop. Each layer is in a different place."



"But!" Mello pointed at her, spinning around. "My God, yes! Mother Mary was placed at the top of the stairs, as if to say, \'look up here\'. Then she was placed in the corridor, but where was she facing? Towards that room! Maja\'s ghost, where did she lead us? Into that room! That room has always been the key! That\'s why they keep trying to show it to us!"



Matt pursed his lips. "You\'re implying sentience on the part of the ghosts."



Mello nodded, "Yes, I am." He stalked around the table. "Century! Go and shout up to Ioan that we\'ve solved the puzzle. He can stop running now."



The teenager winced. "Why me?"



"Because I don\'t speak Welsh."



Century sneered, "Neither would he. You said he was from Cardiff. They don\'t speak Welsh down there. More English than the..."



"Well tell him in English then." Mello hesitated. They could see his mind racing. It was in his stance and distance in his eyes as he looked inwards. Then he jolted into activity. "I\'m going to look at that room." He took off towards the door with Century half a beat behind him.



Matt shuffled off his stool and followed at a more leisurely pace, only just overtaken at the door by Deontic, who had started running the second she saw him moving. Matt smirked. "Nervous, Dee?"



"Like you aren\'t." She countered, though he appeared perfectly calm.



Mello reached the top of the stairs. He laughed aloud at the still thundering footsteps. "Stop now, Ioan Prothero! We know about the room. We know that you recorded the album in here." He placed his hand on the doorknob by way of illustration. "Stop now. We get the message."



"Stopio nawr!" Century added, as Matt and Deontic caught up behind him.



The footsteps didn\'t stop, the corridor was icy around them, and, as Mello turned the doorknob, the music started. It was loud and furious, Maja Gustafsson\'s soprano soaring above it. Mello fell back from the door, turning a shocked face towards his equally stunned company. Only many years of Wammy\'s House training stopped any one of them running. They all felt, as a deep running certainty, that opening the door would reveal the band itself. They could hear the deep, scraping tones of Ioan\'s cello, his fingers working hard on the pick ups. Rasmus and Michael speeding up the backbeat, as if duelling him musically. Then Jan\'s electric guitar swathing in. It was loud and passionate, but it was still amateur.



The steel rose in Mello\'s will. He pushed back from the wall, against which he\'d stumbled, and raged towards the door. His army boot kicked upwards, square against the panelling, and he entered with a roar. "We hear you!" He yelled. Everything stopped. It all stopped. The music, the footsteps, everything just stopped. The room was empty, from ceiling to floorboards. There was nothing to see but the camera on its tripod, which they had placed there. Mello snarled. "Mail, I want that footage!" He kicked at the walls, narrowly missing the radiator. He leapt at the windowsill, catching it with both hands, then leaning forward to peer out of the window. The Welsh countryside spread out in darkness, with the river rushing beneath. He caught the reflection of a woman\'s face in the glass and reared back, but it was only Deontic, standing in the centre of the room. He rounded on her. "What\'s to see? What was in here?"



Deontic\'s hands were clasped together as she looked around. "I don\'t know yet." Behind her, Century walked in, looked at a wall, then drifted out again.



Mello blinked. "Has Matt gone downstairs alone?" He bolted forward. "Has he gone to get the....?" He almost collided with the redhead in the doorway. "Stay the fuck with me."



Matt gestured helplessness in the face of Mello\'s contradictory orders, but his husband just grabbed his hand and pulled him into the room. "They didn\'t touch the camera this time."



"It\'s 16th century." Century muttered, wandering back in with a pensive look on this face. "The Georgians built that way." He pointed towards the wall, beyond which lay the staircase. "Renovated, but where....?"



"Something frightened them." Deontic mused. "Something frightened them in here." She glanced at the door. "Ioan ran out there. He ran upstairs and kept on running up onto the roof. Why not stop further down the corridor or on the floor above? He ran past the stairs."



Mello looked out of the window again. "The river is below. Maja was found in the river. Jan was found by the river." He inspected the sash windows. They could be raised. "Did they jump?" He was looking down upon a small garden. A gate in a drystone wall would have to be traversed before a climb down the hillside to the river below. "They couldn\'t have landed in the river from this window."



Matt pointed, "My guess is that the drumkit was in that corner. It wouldn\'t be next to the door. It would have been out of the way there and maximised the space."



Mello followed the direction of his gaze. "It would have made sense for the bassist to be near to the drummer. Michael and Rasmus over there, no easy way to escape. Jan and Maja by the window. Maybe they jumped into the garden. It\'s only one storey to fall. Ioan was near to the door, he fled."



"Conjecture, Mello." Deontic warned. "Conjecture and speculation."



"No!" Mello gasped. "It wasn\'t the centre of the room!" He paced forward, beside Deontic, dragging Matt after him. "I\'ve been imagining it came up here. But the window! It came to the window! Gwrach-y-Rhibyn flies! And she came in and went after the Welshman. She chased him up the stairs. She caught him on the roof and sent him over."



Deontic tutted, "There were two Welshmen, Mello."



Out on the landing, Century suddenly shouted, "Help me!" They all fled from the room, dreading what they would find. Century was tearing at the carpet runners on the stairs, but making no headway. "It was often at the top of the stairs!" They all looked at him blankly. "The priest hole!" He stood, nearly losing his balance on the stairs. "Look at this wall! Why do we have to come around such a long mid-landing? There\'s a whole box here that doesn\'t add up when you view it from that room!"



Matt stepped forward. "I\'ll get my toolbox. I have carpet cutters." Mello tightened his grip on Matt\'s hand, indicating his intention to come with him.



Deontic peered back into the room. "But they already fetched the carpet up." Her foot scuffed at the ragged edge left at the threshold of that door. The carpet bunched stiffly and fell back. She crouched down and eased her fingers under it, but the weight of the fitting held it in place.



Century froze. "Duw! The fittings aren\'t original. They aren\'t 16th century!" He stumbled upwards and returned to the empty room. His gaze grazed the skirting board at the connecting wall, then down to the floor. Then he shrieked out his triumph. "These nails are new." He pointed to the two floorboards closest to the wall. "Look how clean they are, compared to the others. Moreover, look how modern they are! Someone saw the floorboards loose and just nailed them back into place."



"My toolbox would really help here." Matt smiled meaningfully at Mello. Mello was staring wide-eyed at the floorboards. "Mello?"



Mello nodded. "Yes." He eyed Century carefully. "You think there\'s a hidden room behind there. One that was open while the band were in here recording?" He watched the Welshman grin smugly. "Well done, Century." He continued staring. "What is likely to be in there?"



"Could be anything. Could just be a hiding hole. Could be a concealed chapel."



"Chapel?"



"For the Catholics, see?"



Mello slowly blinked. "For the Catholics?"



Beside him, Matt jumped backwards, startled. "Fuck shit." It took all of their willpower to follow his gaze to the doorway, each half expecting to see someone standing there staring back. It wasn\'t. It was the figurine of Mother Mary, placed on the threshold; her ceramic eyes fixed on the wall beside Century. "Mello! Just fucking leave her at home next time!"



Mello sighed. "Reconvene in the kitchen. Everyone out. Now."