Spook_me 2020 - Haunted - Chapter 21

[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.

Jack wasted a good long time testing out various combinations of going up and down the stairs, trying to find a way out of this particular spatial bubble he found himself in. Each time he attempted it however, he always ended up somewhere else in the house - just nowhere that wasn't on the first floor. He’d been dumped in just about every room at least three times, the hallways and landing on a number of occasions, and was wondering at what point he might find himself locked on the wrong side of a wardrobe door.

‘What is it they say about the definition of insanity?’ he muttered, stepping back down that last fateful step once more and winding up facing the bathroom window, looking out over the twisted laneway leading to the entrance and the outline of the SUV parked right outside. He looked down and found his boots lodged in an inch deep pool of blood that he very seriously did not want to think about, particularly when it could very well belong to one of his team. He shook the thought away. There was too much of it. Someone would be well and truly dead to have spilled that much, and their body would not just have upped and taken off without it.

‘Not dealing with a vampire at least,’ he mused. Those Romanians had really put him off travelling to that part of the world. He was literally the walking talking version of the all you can eat buffet, and whilst he wasn’t usually opposed to offering himself up for someone to have a taste, or even a bit of a nibble, there was fun and then there was just plain greed.

He stepped out of the bathroom and headed back down the hall for the umpteenth time, carefully navigating all the dislodged items littering the hallway. It might have been more efficient for him to just move them all out of the way, but he didn’t plan on spending the rest of his days stuck wandering around in the dark, having to avoid them. If he broke an ankle tripping over one of them, well, it would be his own stupid fault.

Reaching the top of the stairs he checked his watch against his vortex manipulator. Both kept perfect time normally, but now he noticed how his watch was almost a minute faster than his wrist strap, which kept track of his place in exact space time, rather than relative Earth time. It was puzzling. ‘Hang around here long enough, Jack, and maybe you’ll get to meet yourself.’ At least that would give him alternative ways to pass the time. All he had to do was convince his past future self to quit while he was ahead, or was it behind? He groaned inwardly. He used to have this kind of thing down pat. Talk about rusty.

He ran up and down the stairs at speed a few times, before zipping back down them and almost leaping off the end of the very last step. Just as ever he was back at the top of them, bent over with his hands on his knees catching his breath. ‘Okay, so no going downstairs, I think I get the message. Doesn't mean I like it, but okay.’

On a whim he wandered into the main bedroom, where the cold night air was seeping into the room courtesy of the broken window. Who or what had broken it still wasn’t clear, but it looked very much like something had made an escape out of it and that gave him an epiphany.

He'd had crazier ideas, he had to admit, climbing up onto the cabinet under the window and kicking out a few of the jagged shards to make the hole a little bit bigger and a little less deadly. Impaled on glass or having your jugular ripped open was never pleasant and now wasn't the time to revisit that particular method of death, or serious injury at least.

He reached for the drapes on the left hand side which were still hanging, albeit very loosely, from the curtain rod that was about one good tug from coming away altogether from its bracket. He wrapped a length of the thick material around his arm and gave himself an appraising look. ‘If Tarzan can do it in nothing more than a leopard print loincloth…’ He threw himself forward, bracing himself for the possibly painful landing. It came quicker than he expected, and a lot softer too. He hadn't landed on hard flagstones at all - or been belted by a curtain rod that followed him out through the window - but rather into a soft layer of duvet and pillows. Looking around he realised he was lying under the large poster bed, sunken into its softness. ‘Oh, come on! Seriously? I want out of this. Specifically, I'd like to know where my friends are. How come they're not trapped up here with me?’ He checked his vortex manipulator again but it had nothing useful to report.

He flopped back on the pillows, frustrated. Nothing around here made any sense. First something outside tried to kill him, and now something inside wanted to keep him right where he was. ‘How about I just stay here?’ he asked out aloud. ‘Catch up on some zzzs?’ He closed his eyes but he had no intention of sleeping, only of leaving himself alone with his thoughts as he tried to mull things over. It would be great if Gwen and Ianto could just burst through the door right now and accuse him of lying on the job whilst they did all the work. Again. Didn’t they always?

As far as problems went, he supposed this wasn’t the worst one to have. It was certainly better than his previous one. He wasn’t frozen for a start. He pushed himself back up off the bed and began prowling around the house. He couldn’t explain it but something felt different now. Like there was someone always two steps behind him, watching over his shoulder. Watching him. Waiting for something.

He walked back towards the study. Perhaps there was something in there that would provide a clue. Someone might have kept diaries or letters of the things that went on here. As he rounded the corner and stepped into the hallway, he saw that the door to the study was closed. He wrapped a hand around the brass knob but it wouldn’t budge. It hadn’t been locked before but now it was shut against him. He tried the next door along - the bedroom- but it too was now shut and wouldn't open. In fact, all the doors were now locked, except for the master bedroom. He was beginning to feel like a mouse in a maze, only he wasn't interested in the cheese.

He heard a sound more terrifying than any ghost or spectral vision. A sudden scream cut through the otherwise eerie silence. He knew that voice, the sound of his lover screaming. It turned his blood to ice. Those were not the screams of someone in pain. Those were screams of absolute terror and desperation, of life hanging in the balance.

Jack ran for the stairs, flying down them three at a time. He forced his way off the final step with such force that when he arrived back at the top, he tumbled head over heels all the way back down again.

‘Ianto!’ he yelled, praying the man could hear him and know help was on its way. He ran back up the stairs, trying to break down every last door for a way out of this spatial lock, spurred on by the horror in those pleas for help. Kick and shove as he might, not a single door yielded. Even the master bedroom was barred to him now. He rushed back to the landing and paused only for a second and the most desperate idea entered his mind. He checked the distance over the balustrade. Not enough to kill him, just enough to hurt a little as he vaulted recklessly over it and out into the empty space.

A split second later and he should have landed painfully on the parquet floors. Instead he felt himself jolted in mid air. Something caught around his neck, solid and unyielding, like a heavy rope. His hands flew to grasp at it but though he could feel it tightening around his neck, his hands met nothing but empty air. He struggled and flailed, but there was nothing he could do to release its grip on his neck, crushing his adam's apple and cutting off his ability to breathe. The more he struggled the tighter the invisible rope clenched but it was impossible to do anything else as he gagged against it, clawing uselessly. He could just barely make out the continued screams from Ianto until they fell horribly silent, and then Jack lost his own fight as the spots dancing in front of him turned to a solid black.

Next chapter...