The Stone House Read online

  ‘Oh, I was, was I?’ Tanya says.

  ‘Yeah,’ Ram says. ‘You were.’

  Tanya folds her arms and breathes out slowly and loudly.

  ‘The point is,’ Miss Quill says, using her pen to show exactly what and where the point is on the screen, ‘that the legend of Faceless Alice is alive.’

  They look at her blankly.

  ‘We all saw her, the girl with no face, whose mouth morphed out of her head as she came towards Ram. Right?’

  They all nod, apart from Ram, who shrugs again. He’s good at shrugging.

  ‘But that wasn’t part of the urban myth until Ram wrote it. That wasn’t what happened when you went yesterday, according to what you both told me. Before, she was faceless. You imposed the mouth after you’d read about her. Basically, you made it up, probably to impress people. Suddenly, though, she’s pursuing us as if she were like that all along. Writing her like that made her like that.’

  ‘How can that happen?’ Tanya asks.

  ‘Legends have their own lives and get passed on. They’re contagious,’ Miss Quill says. ‘They evolve, shifting with each host. It’s how culture grows. Where would we be without the enduring stories of Parsela and Whitshade?’ A wistful look crosses her face.

  More blankness happening.

  Charlie turns round to explain. ‘They’re rebels. From our planet. I mean they weren’t real but—’

  ‘They are real to those who believe in a republic. They are as real as any story with truth running through its centre,’ Miss Quill says. She stands military straight, shoulders back. Tanya can almost see Miss Quill’s old world revolving around her, then fading as she comes back to this one. ‘What’s different in this case is that she, and the other creatures, were tangible.’

  ‘Maybe it’s because the house is so near the Rift?’ Tanya says. ‘Maybe all stories need is a source of external energy to make them live.’

  ‘That’s a theory at least,’ Miss Quill says.

  ‘Does that mean it’s growing in strength?’ Ram says.

  Nothing in his voice says he’s worried. The frantic tapping of his fingers, however, does.

  ‘It’s possible that you’ve helped a sentient nightmare to evolve, Ram,’ Miss Quill says.

  ‘And as sentient nightmares go,’ April says, ‘it seemed very keen on you.’

  ‘But who spelled out the pasta?’ Tanya says. ‘Wouldn’t Faceless Alice want us there to add to her dust pile collection? Why would she want us to leave?’

  ‘Fickle Faceless Mary?’ Ram says.

  ‘So what do we do about it?’ Charlie asks.

  ‘We don’t have to do anything about it,’ Ram says.

  ‘We could be doing more harm than good by being involved,’ April says. ‘Ram should write a post saying that Faceless Alice and her Magically Morphing Mouthparts have left the house and then the living legend will die. Won’t it?’

  ‘I don’t know if it works like that,’ Miss Quill says.

  ‘Then how does it work?’ Charlie says. ‘We can’t get into the house because of the developers. And, anyway, how do you fight a legend?’

  ‘By getting to its source,’ Miss Quill says.

  NINETEEN

  MR ALAN F. TURNPIKE OF MEADOW ROW

  ‘Why do I have to be here again?’ Ram asks when Tanya walks up to him and April at Elephant and Castle Tube station. ‘Charlie and Matteusz aren’t.’

  ‘Can you stop moaning for just a minute?’ Tanya says.

  ‘No,’ Ram replies. Then he smiles.

  Miss Quill strides over. ‘Follow me,’ she says. She walks out of the station with Tanya, with April and Ram trailing after her.

  There’s a slight breeze. It was so boiling in the underground that, when Tanya missed the first Tube, she’d been grateful for the rush of coolness and bit of grit in her eye.

  ‘Nice place you’ve brought us, Miss Quill. Don’t they call it “Effluent and Castle”?’ Ram says.

  ‘If the people who live here call it by that name, that’s one thing,’ Miss Quill says. ‘Anything else is propaganda. Always ask, who profits?’

  ‘Why do I get the feeling we’re no longer talking about Elephant and Castle?’ Ram asks.

  ‘Very perceptive. There’s hope for you yet, Mr Singh,’ Miss Quill says.

  ‘Was that sarcasm, Miss Quill?’ Tanya says. ‘Because sarcasm is beneath you, that’s why—’

  ‘Thank you, Tanya, that will do.’ It’s unclear from her face if Miss Quill is pissed off or pleased, but then that’s normal. Her phone vibrates. She takes it out, looks at it, and frowns. ‘Charlie and Matteusz won’t be joining us,’ she says. ‘Charlie says they’re onto something.’

  ‘Sounds interesting,’ April says.

  ‘Sounds suspicious,’ Miss Quill replies, walking off. The others follow a few steps behind. She strides past a street full of tiny shops running by the station. It smells of garlic and rosemary, cinnamon and batter. Tanya’s stomach rumbles. Miss Quill marches on. No time for a snack, then.

  ‘Remind me why I’m here again?’ Ram shouts over the traffic.

  ‘You said you’d keep me company,’ April replies.

  ‘And I am, aren’t I? So what’s our plan of attack?’

  ‘There will be no “attack”,’ Miss Quill says as they go under the bridge. ‘Tanya tracked down the person who runs the site, and we’re going for a friendly chat.’

  ‘I’ve seen your “friendly chats”,’ Ram says.

  ‘And you’ll be the recipient of one very shortly,’ Miss Quill says. Even her bob has an angry swing. Angry bob.

  Meadow Row may well have been a meadow once, filled with cornflowers and butterflies, boxed in by hedgerows, but now it features low-rise seventies-style blocks surrounding a patch of green. A few trees rustle around the edges of the grass. Trees always seem to know something. They’re like a group of girls that you always think are talking about you.

  Mr Alan F. Turnpike lives on the top floor of the nearest set of flats. As they climb the stairs, Miss Quill says, ‘Leave this one to me.’ She looks with distaste at the door knocker in the shape of a ghost and knocks with her knuckles instead.

  A man in his forties—fifties maybe, hard to tell—opens the door. He pushes his glasses up his nose. Seeing Miss Quill, he swallows twice, opens his mouth to speak, then closes it again. It’s like she’s a word stealer.

  ‘Mr Alan F. Turnpike?’ she says, looking straight at him. Her bob shimmies.

  ‘Yes?’ he says.

  ‘Don’t ask me, tell me. Is that your name?’

  He steps backwards, his hands coming up to his chest. ‘Er, yes?’

  ‘Miss Quill, I think you’re scaring him,’ April says, tapping Miss Quill on the shoulder.

  Miss Quill flicks April’s fingers from her without even looking. ‘I’m not scaring you, Mr Alan F. Turnpike, am I?’ she asks. ‘Because that would not be edifying for a man of your renown, stature, and experience, now would it?’

  Mr Alan F. shakes his head. A lot.

  ‘Right then. So we’ll come in and talk about it, shall we? Yes? Good.’ Miss Quill walks into the hallway of his flat, motioning with a switch of her bob for the others to follow. Alan F. stands flat against the wall, nodding at each of them as they pass through into the small lounge. Black patches stain the walls like squashed spiders.

  Miss Quill sits in the armchair, perching on the edge of the seat. Her back is so upright it’s as if her spine’s been put through straighteners. ‘Sit down, then, Alan,’ she says, patting the chair next to her.

  He walks forward, apologising to Ram and April as he passes. He plumps up the cushions on the sofa and makes sure that all the Blu-rays are lined up on the shelf. Ram and April sit on the sofa, Tanya on the chair at the desk crammed into the corner. Sitting down next to Miss Quill, Alan looks round the room, his eyes wide. ‘Can I ask, if it’s not too rude a question, what you’re doing in my flat?’ he asks.

  ‘Alan,’ Miss Quill says, ‘I may c
all you Alan, may I?’

  ‘Of course,’ Alan says, ‘Al, if you like.’

  ‘Well then, Alan—and I will call you Alan, if I may. It’s a beautiful name, means “handsome and helpful one” in at least three languages.’

  ‘Does it?’ Alan says, sitting up a bit taller himself. His back cracks and he slumps again.

  ‘I’m sure of it,’ Miss Quill says, utterly believably. ‘Anyway, what I would like to talk about is Myth City.’

  He turns as pale as milk. ‘I’ve already called a solicitor. I’m not supposed to talk about it.’ He stands up. ‘Can you leave, please, I don’t even know why I let you in.’

  ‘And you should ask that question of yourself more thoroughly when we’ve gone. Now, however, we just want to talk with you, that’s all,’ Miss Quill says. ‘We may even be able to help.’ She’s got her reassuring voice on, as if talking a cat down from the top of a cupboard. ‘Why do you need a lawyer?’

  Alan places two fingers in his mouth and chews on his nails like they’re nubs of corn on a cob. ‘There’s a story on my site that some developer’s claiming is lowering the value of their property.’ He breathes slowly in and out.

  ‘I’m not making it up, but they say it’s a malicious attempt to undermine them.’ He laughs. ‘I couldn’t be malicious if I tried.’ (Tanya gets the sense that this is so true that even if he did try, it would be like a kitten putting on boxing gloves.) ‘Thing is, this developer’s persuaded my employer to give me the sack. I think they’ve worked together on something. I’m unemployed because of that house.’

  ‘It wouldn’t happen to be an old stone house?’ Tanya says. ‘In Shoreditch?’

  Alan turns to her. ‘Why? What do you know?’

  ‘We’ve all been to the house,’ Miss Quill says calmly. ‘We know that it’s true. Well, that some of it is true. Ram has posted twice himself. If the developers want to get nasty, they can call on Striker.’

  ‘Thanks, Miss Quill,’ Ram says. ‘Good to know you’ve got my back. So glad I came.’

  Alan leans forward, staring at Ram ‘Really? You’re Striker?’ His face lights up. He now seems much younger. ‘Faceless Alice screamed at you?’

  ‘You seem more invested than someone who just runs a site,’ Miss Quill says. ‘You’ve been there, haven’t you?’

  He nods, shuffling his feet. ‘I first went years ago. There were loads of rumours about it when I was at school, and I’ve always been into that kind of stuff.’

  ‘Which school?’ April asks. She looks completely innocent. Tanya tells herself to never play high stakes poker with April. Or Miss Quill.

  ‘It was Coal Hill, wasn’t it?’ Ram says. Tanya tells herself to play high stakes poker with Ram as soon as possible.

  Alan nods. ‘I don’t know what made me go, but one day—a day like this actually, hot, muggy, storm on its way—I found myself walking home that way. That’s the first bit I can’t explain, but there are many others. I never normally went that way, but I felt compelled, as if drawn to it on some level.’

  Tanya feels the others staring at her. She doesn’t look at them. The same thing happened to her and she doesn’t know how to explain it either. The nearest she can put it is that it was like walking towards an unseen lighthouse. A darkhouse.

  ‘I stopped when I walked past and looked up. It was, as usual, in shadow. There was a young woman standing in the top left window. She put her hand up to the glass and I couldn’t tell if she was waving to me or warning me away. I couldn’t see her face at all.’

  ‘That could have been someone who lived there,’ Tanya says.

  ‘The only person who lived there was an old woman. A widow. Her husband died years before and she didn’t have a daughter, a niece, anybody that would fit the description of a teenage girl. I was convinced that the old woman had trapped her there. Either that or—’ He stops. When Tanya looks up, he’s staring at her.

  ‘You’ve seen her, haven’t you?’ he says to her. ‘I can see it in your eyes.’

  Tanya tells herself to never play face-to-face poker with anyone, ever. It’s easier online—a poker face is easier to keep when you don’t have one. ‘What are you saying, that she left some kind of mark on my retinae? Bit too J-horror, even for me.’ If you don’t know how else to play, bluff.

  ‘Whoever I’ve talked to about the stone house, it’s the same thing—they felt called there. Even if they meant to go somewhere else, they were somehow compelled towards it. And they are all similar in some way.’ He looks away. ‘Lonely, lost, or have lost.’

  Silence. Thick, embarrassed silence. A soupy kind of silence, a minestrone with bits floating in it that you can’t, and don’t want to, identify.

  ‘That could describe anybody,’ Miss Quill says, briskly, brushing her hands. ‘It’s like palmistry. I could tell anyone’s fortune, even if they didn’t have a palm.’

  ‘Really?’ Alan asks. He touches his palm, subconsciously or not.

  ‘Oh, come on then,’ Miss Quill says, taking his palm in her hand. ‘Right.’ She traces a few lines on his hand and looks deeply into his eyes until he tears his away. ‘You’re a sensitive person who has known loss and sadness, you find it hard to let people know the real you, but inside you’re aching to be known. You are thinking of moving on, but something is holding you back. If you don’t address whatever it is that has a hold on you, then you will be stuck forever.’ She looks up. ‘Accurate?’

  ‘Wow,’ he says. ‘Just, well, wow.’

  ‘Exactly. You could say the same of any human being, of any being at all.’ She stops, thinks. ‘Well, that’s not quite true. You wouldn’t say that of a Dalek, would you, unless you wanted to provoke them into killing you, and why would you want to do that?’

  ‘Um. I wouldn’t?’ Alan says. He is staring now at Miss Quill with eyes so soft and squishy he could be looking at a baby panda GIF.

  Miss Quill sees the look. Tanya swears she can see the catlike calculation cross Miss Quill’s face: play with Alan or don’t play with Alan. Claws in or out. She places his hand back in his lap and pats it. ‘No, you wouldn’t. Alan, you really don’t want to dally with predators.’

  ‘No,’ he says, looking strangely disappointed. The UST in the room is confusing.

  ‘Can we get back to the stone house?’ Tanya asks. ‘You know, the reason we’re here?’

  ‘I did whatever I could, you know,’ Alan says. ‘I called the police and even went in a few times. The old woman found me digging around in the attic and flew at me. It was like one of those ghost train witches who fly over your head, only she just launched herself at me.’

  ‘So more like an elderly lady reacting to you breaking into her house?’ Tanya says, her tone so dry it could soak up all the mould in the flat.

  ‘She was definitely angry. Said she didn’t know how I dared to enter her house. It was sacred, she said. I asked her what she meant, but she started crying, rocking backwards and forwards, holding this weird doll with a hat on.’

  ‘There’s a room full of foreign dolls,’ Tanya explains, as if that’s a normal thing to say.

  ‘I saw it. Really creepy. Where did she get them, that’s what I want to know? She never went anywhere, as far as I can work out,’ Alan says. ‘Anyway, I went back once after that, late at night. I could hear the old woman snoring in her room, so I thought I’d be safe. A bit of me thought that maybe she was the young woman in the window, dressed up Psycho-style.’

  ‘That would be insane,’ Ram says.

  Miss Quill shrugs. ‘People do a lot more insane things,’ she says.

  ‘So I looked into her room to make sure it was her snoring and not a tape or anything like that. I’ve seen films, I know how things work, and there she was. Not a bolster in the bed, no pulley system, this wasn’t Ferris Bueller’s Day Off; the old woman was asleep. And Faceless Alice appeared by her bed. She stood next to the old woman and stroked her hair. Then she turned to me, her face like an oval moon, and reached out. I ran out of the
re so fast and I’ve never gone back.’

  ‘So what do you think she is?’ April says, huddled up with Ram on the sofa.

  ‘Honestly?’ he says. ‘A ghost. I can’t think what else she could be. She’s why I started the site in the first place, to see if anyone else had seen her. And they have. Lots. I’ve had reports come in steadily ever since. Given that I never found the girl and she seems to be exactly the same, I can only conclude that she’s an apparition.’

  The silence is now sad and weighed down.

  ‘What are you going to do about the legal situation?’ April asks. She’s taken out her notebook. She’d make a great barrister one day. (To be fair, she’d make a good anything. That’s probably what her report says from every teacher—‘She’d make a good anything, now take her away and get her to stop asking questions, I’m tired.’)

  ‘If I don’t take the site down,’ he says, ‘they’re going to sue. I’ll probably never find out who she is, or why she is now screaming.’

  Miss Quill stands up to leave. ‘Thank you for your help, Alan,’ she says. ‘It was illuminating. If we find anything out about Alice, we’ll let you know.’

  Alan nods and looks as if he wants them all to stay. He doesn’t ask.

  Miss Quill turns back when they reach the front door.

  ‘What does the “F” stand for?’

  ‘Fergus,’ Alan Fergus Turnpike says. He blushes. ‘Does that mean something in several languages as well?’

  Miss Quill sucks her lower lip. ‘Let’s just say, you should never go to the Eckbear system,’ she says.

  ‘Why not?’ he asks.

  ‘Having the name “Fergus” means you will leave with neither clothes nor dignity,’ Miss Quill says as they start walking along to the stairs.

  Tanya looks back. Alan Fergus Turnpike has a look of wonder on his face that suggests he now longs for the Eckbear system and will Google it within the minute.

  ‘He looks lost here. You don’t think we should just send him through the Rift and see what he finds?’ Tanya whispers.