Read Haunted Shadows 1: Sickness Behind Young Eyes for Free Online Page A

as if they smouldered with a silent fury. Marsha had to
throw  extra logs on every twenty minutes as the flames ate through them. She
stopped every so often to tell an impatient bar customer to ‘piss off’.
     
    We sat just ten feet away from the
fire. It was so hot that Jeremiah had taken off his coat and rolled his jumper
sleeves up to his elbows. As much as I could see that the room was warm, I
couldn’t feel it. I wore a thermal t-shirt, a jumper, a coat and a scarf but
the cold still managed to sneak its way through and smother my skin. I turned
my chair to face the fire so that the flames spat toward me, but it was like
someone rubbed me with ice. Not just the outside of my skin, either. It was
like my insides were freezing.
     
    Outside the pub the darkness peered
in through the window, so heavy that it was like a presence watching us. There
was something about the village that raised the hairs on the back of my neck. I
always got the feeling that someone was watching me. It didn’t matter if we
were at the graveyard, the town hall, the pub or even my own room, it always
seemed like an unseen pair of eyes stared from the shadows.
     
    I crossed my arms and rubbed my hand
up and down my sides to shock some warmth into my body, but the friction didn’t
do a thing.
     
    “You look like shit,” said Jeremiah.
     
    Every other man in the pub had a pint
of larger, bitter or cider. Jeremiah had a ginger beer. People spoke in murmurs
around us, as if they guarded their words so that they didn’t leave the
confines of their tables. Every so often I was sure a man or woman shot a
glance at me. A dog sat under a table to our right. Its fur was black like crow
feathers, but it had fallen out in places. It lifted a weak paw and scratched
its ear, then lowered its chin to the ground.
     
    “Thanks,” I told Jeremiah. “You’re a
charmer.”
     
    “Seriously, Ella. You should get some
kip. I can’t be dragging your arse around all day tomorrow. I don’t want you
getting in my way.”
     
    “Again, charming.”
     
    My head banged with the throb of a
tribal drum. My skin felt sensitive and shivery, as if someone with an icy hand
was touching me. I wanted to shake the hand off, but no matter how many layers
I put on it stayed there. My throat burned like I had swallowed nettles and my
nose gushed.
     
    I stood up and pushed my chair out.
     
    “I’ll be a minute,” I said, and
walked toward the loos.
     
    When I came back I had stemmed the
flow of snot from my nose, but my throat still felt like I had drank acid.
Jeremiah looked at me, raised his glass and tipped the ginger beer into his
mouth.
     
    “I ordered for you,” he said.
     
    “You couldn’t have waited?”
     
    “Marsha asked. And I was hungry.”
     
    A shiver ran through me. I pulled my
coat closer. Every inch of me wanted to crawl upstairs and flop into bed. I
couldn’t do that, though. There would be time for rest at some point but for
now I had work to do. This was a rare moment where we weren’t visiting graves
or looked through death registers, and I had an assignment to finish. I thought
I would try a different tactic.
     
    “Bruges is lovely this time of year,”
I said.
     
    Jeremiah put his glass down on the
table with enough force to be on the wrong side of slamming it.
     
    “Professor Higson loves playing with
his puppets, doesn’t he?”
     
    “I’m here because I want to be.”
     
    “You’re here because he’s tugging at
your strings. And you’re not the first.”
     
    I felt my forehead screw up and a
steam of anger rose in my chest. It was true that Higson had helped persuade me
to come on the investigation, but in the end I made the choice myself. There
was no way I would let myself be manipulated.
     
    “Believe what you want,” I said. “I’m
here because I thought this would be interesting. Turns out you’re as full of
shit as the fields around this dump.”
     
    Jeremiah leaned forward and grimaced.
“Did you