Ellen Datlow - The Best Horror of the Year. Volume 6

“If I go in there, I’ll be sneezing all night.” He scratched his throat as if he’d started to itch. “My family used that shack as a beach house. Whenever I stayed here, I’d have a violent allergic reaction to the place: spores, or dust, or something. Wild horses wouldn’t drag me in there.”

“It’ll probably take me about ten minutes.”

“Go and take your ten minutes, then.” The man visibly shuddered as he gazed up at the bedroom windows. “What a God-awful box it is. Being in there’s like being in a tin coffin. The place scared me half to death when I was a boy. I’d lie in bed at night and hear the entire house squealing, tapping, clicking, moaning. That God-awful racket kept me awake for hours.” He permitted his stone-hard features to soften into something near a smile. “I didn’t realise back then that the sounds were caused by all those tin sheets contracting as they cooled after the heat of the day. Ergo: contraction of metal, not noisy ghosts.” He briskly cleared his throat. “My sisters tried to convince me it was haunted. Nothing like siblings to tease one, eh? Especially at the witching hour.”

“What made your uncle choose to live out here?”

“Pardon?”

“After all, he’d have been an extremely wealthy man, so what made him want to spend his time in a small beach house made from tin?”

“Well, detective, that’s none of your business, is it?” Jeremy Kirkwood thrust his clenched fists into his jacket pockets. “Didn’t you say ten minutes?”

People often describe a haunted house as an Unquiet House. The Tin House wasn’t the least bit quiet — though whether that suggested this quirky building was actually haunted wasn’t, he decided, for him to judge one way or the other. As Newton walked along the hallway toward the kitchen, he heard a series of clicking sounds, together with squeaks, loud popping noises, and the creak of timbers under pressure. He recalled Jeremy Kirkwood talking about the racket the tin cladding made during the night as it cooled.

“This is November,” he told himself. “It’s been cold all day. This can’t be the metal contracting.”

He rested his palm on the kitchen doorframe. The woodwork trembled as it might do if the house was hit by a storm. But outside was relatively still. Just a few snowflakes drifted by. This is a mystery. He loved myster-ies — he’d love to spend time investigating the popping noises and the sharp tapping coming from upstairs, but he’d been ordered to take the photographs then hand the keys to Jeremy Kirkwood. Perhaps there were rats in the walls — however, rodent infestation wouldn’t be a police matter.

Newton switched on the kitchen light. The place had been left tidy by the forensic team. Of course, the bowl of soup that the missing man had abandoned had gone — no doubt for fingerprint and DNA testing. He photographed the old fashioned stove, the Belfast sink, then moved onto the lounge. Again — tidied, vacuumed, and untouched by man or rat … at least, untouched in the last six months anyway. After taking photographs of the 1950s era armchairs, he worked his way through the ground floor rooms. Meanwhile, the scratching, tip-tapping, and popping continued. Dear God. Who’d live in a house made of tin?

Upstairs, he photographed tidy bedrooms and a trim bathroom. He’d been ready to head back downstairs when he recalled the Chief’s order: I want you to photograph every room. And I mean every room, no matter how small .

He checked the master bedroom. Straightaway, he realised he’d missed a narrow door in the corner. As he walked toward it, he glanced out through a window that was covered by steel mesh. From up here, he could see the dark expanse of ocean. While on the driveway stood Lord Kirkwood’s nephew, and heir to his fortune. A man with a motive. Though no doubt the Chief’s team would have scrutinised that angle already: greedy, impatient nephew murdering rich uncle would top the list of suspects. Jeremy Kirkwood had retreated to the driveway gates where he stood, glaring at the house. The man’s expression was strange. He looked as if he expected the building to lunge forward and bite him. Kirkwood appeared decidedly scared of the Tin House.

Newton took a moment to scrutinise details of the master bedroom. Several framed photographs of Lord Alfred Kirkwood hung from the wall. The missing man clearly preferred to see photographs of himself when he woke in the morning. On a table beside the window was a hairbrush. He noticed long, white hairs sticking to the bristles. When he glanced back at photographs of the elderly Lord he saw the same white, shoulder-length hair. In his youth, the man must have been an aristocratic dandy.

He opened the narrow door in the bedroom to discover a small antechamber. Perhaps four feet by eight feet, the vestibule might have been used for storage, although now it was completely empty.

After taking the single photograph, he’d have walked away if it wasn’t for a sudden, frantic clatter from the far end of the room, which formed part of an outside wall. There was a rapid, metallic popping, as if tiny, bone-hard fists rapped on the tin sheet at the far side. For some reason, he felt compelled to rest his palm against that part of the wall. This was the only section to be covered in wallpaper; the paper itself had a furiously busy pattern of tiny red roses peeping out from green leaves.

The wall vibrated powerfully against his hand. A mystery all right; however, a mystery he wasn’t ordered or paid to solve, and one hardly relevant to the case of the missing lord.

As he walked away, the metallic popping changed. The sound morphed from pell-mell clattering to a unified rhythm: whatever objects or vermin that attacked the metal cladding had now begun to strike it at the same time; pretty much in the same way a dozen different drummers in a percussion band would strike the same beat.

The door swung shut behind; immediately the room crashed to darkness. He could see nothing. The pounding on the wall intensified — growing louder as it did so. Maybe it was Kirkwood’s claim that he was allergic to the house that caused the effect. But suddenly Newton’s skin began to itch. His chest tightened and breathing in that dark, little chamber became difficult. Quickly, he tugged open the door. The light from the bedroom spilled in. He quickly strode back along the narrow room to where the sound seemed to emanate from the rose-covered wallpaper. He balled his fist and slammed it against the wall. The drumming sound irritated him. For a moment, he even told himself that the metallic popping coming from the other side made his skin itch. His fingernails scratched at his face, making the looser parts of the skin slide over the jawbone.

The clatter from the other side grew louder.

“Shut up.”

He pounded the side of his fist against the wall again. If there were rats in there, they’d get a nasty shock. But the rodents or whatever made the noise didn’t scarper; instead the rapping grew louder. The sound goaded him. It demanded to know if Mark Newton HAD LEFT HIS MARK ON THE WORLD.

Remembering that line in his aunt’s letter twisted a nerve to the point he felt a blaze of fury. As the metallic drumbeat reached a crescendo, he stood back then delivered such a hell of a kick to the wall. His police training had taken over. He used that particular kick he’d practiced so often to kick down some drug peddler’s front door. The loud drumming against the metalwork had stopped at least. Now he could hear nothing but his own heartbeat.

When he looked down he saw, to his surprise, that he’d managed to slam the toe of his shoe through not only the wallpaper with its blood red roses, but the plywood panel. Damn it. Now he’d have to photograph the damage he’d inflicted on the house. Cop turns vandal. He imagined the Chief’s anger when Jeremy Kirkwood submitted the repair bill.