Spook_me 2020 - Haunted - Chapter 6

[m_findlow]

Title: Haunted
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters: Jack, Gwen, Ianto, OCs
Author: m_findlow
Rating: M
Length: 50,847 words
Content notes: none
Author notes: Written for spook_me 2020 Prompt - Ghost
Summary: The team investigate rumours of a haunted house in rural Wales.

Ianto swatted somewhat uselessly at the hem of his jumper, dislodging the thick smear of dust. It wasn't the first time and it most definitely wouldn't be the last. The whole place was covered in an inch of dust and that was including the furniture already covered up with sheets.

‘I thought the hub was bad,’ he muttered to himself. It'd take a month of Sundays to wipe down everything. No wonder the Victorians all had maids.

He picked up the subatomic resonator off the threadbare carpet in the hallway and tried to settle on a spot for it. The sideboard had been a good candidate, but now that he tried to find space on it to put the ten square inch piece of alien technology, he realised there was none. It was already cluttered with every spare inch housing vases, painted plates on little stands, odd carved statues in black stone and ornate cut crystal bowls. Try as he might to rearrange them, there was no creating a space.

‘You can put some of that stuff in here, if you like,’ Gwen's voice called out to him. Her head poked out from a doorway just a little further down the hall of the eastern wing of the house. The dust covered hallway lights cast a muted glow over her face.

He gathered up a handful of items, leaving dust free outlines on the sideboard and carried them down the hall.

Gwen was in a tiny room with glass paneled double doors, perhaps six feet wide at most. The same red carpet with its baroque scrollwork stretched from the hallway and across the floor. A long desk ran the length of one wall and looked to be made from a single piece of timber, still rough and covered in its original bark at the edges. There was a single wooden chair and a small cabinet pushed up under the tall window which looked out onto the cottage garden. Opposite the desk was a wall made entirely of rows of books, exuding the scent of cracked leather and yellowing pages.

‘Nicer than my office,’ he remarked. 'With a bit of a clean and polish, of course.' There was only so much he could do to his space in the archives with its grey steel cabinets and shelves, ergonomic chair and computer, to make it feel more warm and inviting. A rug laid under the desk and a nice leather blotter on its surface was all he'd managed. Ideas about setting up a coffee table, sofa and a few pictures on the walls had never come to fruition.

He dropped his collection onto the desk even as Gwen was setting up a portable camera, fixing it in place and adjusting the angle to take in as much of the external view as possible. It was the only window facing east as they'd determined from their preliminary exploration of the house, and it had the added advantage of height being on the first floor. Other cameras had been set up in the master bedroom facing west, the first floor landing and the dining room, covering northerly and southerly positions. Just because people thought what they saw was happening inside the house didn't mean whatever it was didn't originally come from outside. It gave him some small amount of comfort to know that if anything approached the house, they'd be alerted to it.

‘Any sign of our fearless leader yet?’ he asked.

Gwen leaned closer to the window, peering out through it with her own eyes rather than the image feeding from the camera to her laptop. ‘They were headed back down the road we came up when we arrived, last I saw.’

Ianto rolled his eyes and returned to his task. That was just so typical of Jack. He always found a way to avoid the tedious work. And, he always knew someone that was somehow connected to any case they investigated. Ianto shouldn't be jealous. He should have gotten over all of that by now, but there was always a nagging sense that Jack knew more than he let on. Jack was accomplished at putting on a smile and a carefully placed “whoops” or “I didn't know, I swear”. Playing dumb was one of Jack's many faces, and one of his favourites. Everyone underestimated a man who appeared incompetent or foolish. He had his moments of genuine stupidity, but he was far cleverer than anyone ever gave him credit. It was dangerous to think Jack was anything less.

But when it came to matters of the heart, Ianto was convinced that Jack was as useless as the rest of them. He seemed oblivious to the feelings of others at times, especially Ianto himself. He set the resonator on the new space he'd created and heaved a sigh. Jack's old flames were always getting dragged into Torchwood business, and not always for the first time. Jack rarely ever offered up much detail about how he'd know them, or what the extent their relationship had been. It didn't make Ianto half wonder if he wasn't just the same as them, a flash in the pan for someone like Jack. Someone who might, in a few decades, when he was old and grey, get sucked back into Jack's orbit for a brief moment in time. Who would stand in Ianto's shoes, he wondered, the new young lover who was equally jealous of Ianto and whatever intimacy he'd once shared with Jack.

He flipped the switch on the device, making sure it was working to his satisfaction. Don't think about it too much, he told himself. Whatever fling Jack had with the old priest was long in the past.

‘Ianto, do we have any gaffer tape?’

He dusted off his hands, giving them a quick brush down his jeans. ‘There should be some in the SUV. I'll go take a look.’

‘I can get it,’ Gwen insisted.

‘Nope. It's fine. It's on my way.’

He proceeded back down the hall, past the secondary bedroom which took up the back corner of the house and turned right, stepping out onto the landing. The waning afternoon light played through the large windows, throwing its light out and across the landing and down to the foyer below. The wooden floorboards underneath the runner carpets creaked and groaned with his footfalls. It wasn't until he reached the far side of the landing, and began descending the long stairs, that he spotted Jack standing in the foyer, looking up at the landing where he'd just passed.

‘You're back,’ Ianto said as he glided down the stairs. ‘How'd it go?’ Jack didn't seem to hear him, or was otherwise being ignored. He rounded the banister at the end where it ended and walked over. ‘Jack?’

There was no blink of surprise at Ianto's sudden presence, which only proved he'd been intentionally ignored. ‘This is where he hung himself,’ Jack said.

‘Father Michael told you that?’

‘No. I just… it's like a feeling I got when I stood here. Cold. Like I couldn't breathe for a second.’

‘Your imagination running away with you,’ Ianto told him. Jack did enjoy a little bit of melodrama. He stared up at the landing and the thick wooden balustrade. ‘I suppose it would work,’ he agreed. Tie the rope around enough of them so they didn't just snap the minute they took your weight. Decent height too. Probably snap your neck in a heartbeat rather than leave you to choke to death. Whatever Jack thought he imagined standing here under this particular spot didn't translate. Ianto didn't feel any different here to anywhere else. The whole house was cold and derelict.

‘Jack?’ He snapped his fingers in front of Jack's face. He was staring off into nothingness. This time Jack did blink and come back to himself.

He smiled at Ianto. ‘All done setting up?’

‘Almost. What about you? You were gone ages. Find out anything helpful?’

‘We walked all the way back to Father Michael's church. Relived the old days and caught up on more recent times.’

When Jack didn't offer up anything else Ianto knew not to press him. They had barely discussed the matter at hand, that much he could tell.

Creaking overhead drew both their attention as footsteps moved across the landing. Gwen's head peered over the balustrade. ‘Never mind about the tape, Ianto. I used a few of those old books to prop it up and keep it in place. Ah, I see you've found Jack. Perfect timing as always.’

Ianto smirked at Jack's feigned expression of innocence. ‘It was four miles back to the church. That's an eight mile round trip. My feet are killing me.’

Gwen came downstairs to join them. ‘Well then, you won't mind parking yourself in front of the laptop to start running some analysis, will you? Since we did all the legwork in here.’

‘And you haven't found anything yet?’

‘I checked under the bed and in the closets but there were no aliens hiding there. Sorry. Guess they're shy.’

Jack's phone began to trill in his coat pocket and Gwen rolled her eyes. ‘That'd be right. I haven't been able to get a bar of signal out here but you've got incoming.’

Jack groaned as the phone number came up on the display. ‘Urgh. It's that Minister for Home Affairs, Margaret What's Her Name.’

‘Enfield,’ Ianto replied. ‘You'd better take that. She'll only get really pissed if you keep ignoring her.’ As if she wasn't already if she was calling him direct. She'd tried the hub three times this week already and Jack had made an excuse every single time - delivered of course though his ever reliable assistant, diplomatic translator and phone answerer, Ianto.

Jack made a vexed sound in the back of his throat. ‘Unbelievable. No phone reception out here but somehow the devil has found a way to get through.’

Ianto didn't bother to suppress his smile. ‘If that's not paranormal intervention, I don't know what is.’

Jack gave him an unimpressed look. ‘Okay, but if I take this call, you get to search around the property.’

‘Agreed,’ Gwen quickly replied. She grabbed Ianto by the arm. ‘Come on, you. You're coming with me.’

‘Why?’

‘Fresh air.’

He sighed. ‘Great. Love fresh air. Just not sure my shoes will love it.’

Next chapter...