Spook_me 2020 - Haunted - Chapter 12

[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.

Something woke Jack. A sound, a feeling, a troubling sensation right down in his bones. He wasn't sure which. But something. Something that made him feel alert, every nerve ending tingling with unbidden life.

He hadn't even realised that he'd dozed off, much less that his arm was still asleep from where Ianto was lying on it. That was the tingling sensation he felt, as blood tried to force itself back into the slumbering flesh.

A rumpled Gwen emerged, disentangling herself from a wad of manchester. Jack could tell from the frown on her face that she'd been woken by something as well. Ianto stirred only as Jack tried to extricate his arm. He pushed himself up and saw both Jack and Gwen were awake. ‘What time is it? Did we pick up something?’

‘I thought I…’ Gwen's sentence trailed off as she considered how to phrase it. She threw a look at Jack. ‘Did we?’

Jack looked across at the laptop sitting idle on the table. Its screen was off, in sleep mode just as they'd all been. He brushed a finger over the mouse pad, bringing it back to life, but there was nothing. He shook his head.

‘I could have sworn I heard something,’ Gwen insisted. ‘Didn't you?’

‘Maybe there really are ghosts,’ Ianto suggested.

Jack shrugged off the feeling. ’Probably just a rogue squirrel scampering along the gutters.’ He could tell from the anxious looks his team were giving him that they didn't buy it for a second. ‘Relax you guys, it's nothing. Even if our equipment wasn't detecting something that shouldn't be there, I'd know about it,’ he said, holding out his wrist and tapping his vortex manipulator. At least he was pretty sure it would.

The noise came again and this time Jack couldn't deny it. It was a mighty big squirrel that made that much noise.

‘Nope, I definitely heard it that time,’ Ianto said.

Gwen nodded, her head trying to follow the direction it had come from. ‘Me too. It came from upstairs.’

Jack shook his head. ‘No, it was outside.’ That much he was certain of.

‘I'm with Gwen, it was definitely upstairs.’

Jack conceded the point. They couldn't both be wrong. ‘Maybe it was both,’ he said, unwilling to accept that maybe he'd been the one who had misheard. ‘Father Michael said there'd been looters in the area. They bolted when he stumbled on them. They might have decided to come back and give the place another try late at night when there was no chance of anyone being around.’

Ianto raised an eyebrow. ‘And they didn't notice the big black SUV parked out front?’

Jack shrugged it off. ‘Always a chance. They could have come around from behind.’ Even if they'd approached from the laneway, in the pitch black of a country night, it would be almost invisible, but the light from the sitting room window shouldn't be. Still, maybe they had snuck around the back again, away and over the creek or through the woods. It would be pretty easy to slip inside without anyone noticing. They hadn't exactly left the whole house lit up like a Christmas tree. ‘Okay, you two go check upstairs. I'll go out and check around the perimeter.’

‘We're not armed,’ Gwen reminded him.

‘Neither are they, in all likelihood. Besides, when has not having a gun ever stopped you? If they got scared off by a man of the cloth in his twilight years, they're not going to hang around if they see you two.’

‘Are you sure you should be going out there alone?’ Ianto's expression was furtive. Even Gwen looked up at Jack for a response as she was tugging her sneakers back on.

‘We've got a job to do,’ he reminded the pair of them. ‘No different to any other job. Stay focused.’ They nodded silently, donning their game faces, just as he knew they would.

There was a groan of wooden floorboards somewhere overhead, followed by a scratching sound. Jack couldn't mistake the sound this time. A few seconds later there was a rustle and a hiss, but that definitely sounded like it was coming from outside. ‘Meet back here in twenty, okay?’ He didn't need to tell them to watch each other's backs. They slipped from the room on silent feet, leaving him alone.

Tempting as it was to rewind some of their external camera footage, he knew time was of the essence. If they caught whoever it was, all well and good. They could be brought back here for questioning. If not, well, at least they could see if they'd managed to get a clear shot of the face, or faces, and throw it over to the police to handle. If there were locals running pranks and trying to spook the people who lived here, Jack had a special kind of punishment for them. After all, what better way to perpetuate stories about the place being haunted? And, if it turned out to be nothing more than a rogue badger, well, at least they could laugh about it afterwards.

He stepped out of the sitting room, casting his gaze left and right along the foyer, only catching just the briefest glimpse of Gwen and Ianto as they reached the top of the stairs and skipped around the corner and out of sight.

He slipped out through the front door and past the low hedges and symmetrical garden beds, hoping his feet didn't crunch too heavily on the gravel. His eyes took a few moments to adjust to the darkness outside, stubbing a boot on a wooden sleeper that had bent unnaturally out of place from the garden bed it was meant to be fencing off. He caught himself before it sent him tumbling, and focused on the straight line towards the SUV.

In less than twenty seconds, he'd opened the SUV door, popped open the glove box and retrieved his webley and a large torch. Just because he could probably handle a few kids, didn't mean having the gun didn't make him feel better. He pushed the door back shut as quietly as he could, leaning his weight against it until it clicked. For the moment he kept the torch off, letting his eyes drink in whatever available light there was.

And yes, from here, taking a direct path up the lane towards the house, it was abundantly clear that someone was home. The sitting room window glowed a burnished gold, casting its weak light onto the overgrown gardens beneath its low sills.

He turned his head quickly left and right, confirming there was no discernable movement around him. The noises he'd heard before seemed to be at the back of the house. Just like Father Michael had said, they'd broken in from the back. It was clearly a weak spot.

His night vision cleared and shapes that had been malformed before now merged into definitive objects: bushes, garden beds, trees, a wheelbarrow on its side he recalled from earlier that afternoon. Confident he now had the lay of the place, he dashed around towards the side of the house, pausing at the corner only a moment to peer around it, before lengthening his strides.

He was all the way to the coal house before he stopped again. Rather than skirt the corner, he moved away from the house, towards the trees that lined its eastern edge. He moved behind the first large trunk and changed direction, now moving north and further still from the house, using them as cover. Like a military tactician, he'd approach the house from the rear flank and surprise them. Whoever “they” were.

Next chapter...