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discovered several mini wine racks dotted around the kitchen and helped herself to a glass of Rune Valley. It didn’t taste all that great, but then she didn’t have the palate for alcohol, rarely touching the stuff, so it could have tasted swell to an aficionado. Hungry, she searched the fridge-freezer and pulled out a microwave meal. Two hours later―after another fruitless ghost hunt―she was sitting, feeling very alone, around the dining room table that could have housed eight people. A grandfather clock chimed; its hands semaphored six o’clock. The microwave meal lay half eaten before her, it was being washed down with a second glass of Rune Valley.
    The evening raced by with little happening. Juliet consulted her watch several times.
    7.27 p.m.
    7.38 p.m.
    7.53 p.m.
    8.10 p.m.
    8.27 p.m.
    8.40 p.m.
    8.43 p.m.
    8.56 p.m.
    9.01 p.m.
    9.35 p.m.
    Where was it? She had checked out the whole site and there was no sign. There seemed to be nothing here right now, so either it had never been here and the whole story had been a fabrication, or it had been here and since departed.
    Hard to imagine how the damage to Emily’s face could have been attributed to a fanciful imagination, so she dismissed the former. It had since gone then? She had never encountered a spirit which had been able to call up the Light itself. But then she had stumbled upon this trick, so it wasn’t impossible that the spook had too. More likely though it was a ‘seasonal’ spook. She had experienced this before, having to make several visits to one exorcism before the spook eventually graced her with its presence. When she had questioned it on where it was during these absences, it hadn’t known. These ghostly blackouts didn’t seem common, but they did occur. If this was the case, she’d just have to sit it out and wait. If it was active in the house, this part-timer was sure to return.
    It was late. She’d be staying the night here. Juliet looked around at her surroundings and decided there were worse places to be marooned.
     

Chapter VIII
     
     
    She woke with a start.
    The dream had been all too familiar...
    Her mouth could almost feel the dirty rag that had been forced into it ― put there to muffle the screams; her eyes felt sticky from the tape which covered them. She rubbed her hands where moments earlier, in her dream world, they had been tightly bound. She instinctively felt at one of the scars on her arms. There were many more on her legs and back.
    The physical reminders of the horrors she experienced at that house in Ludivico Street―the house where she had developed the condition ―were permanently tattooed onto her skin. Her hands, feet, neck and face were the only places on her body not pock-marked by an instrument of pain. Her fear of intimacy was an understandable by-product of the scarring. With normal clothing, she was indistinguishable from what she considered to be normal society, but she was always careful; short sleeves were never an option. Neither were open neck tops. She’d heard people gossip and whisper and hated it. Still, she should be grateful. Things could have been a lot worse. She wasn’t long away from being victim number five...
    DON’T―YOU―HURT―MY―BABY!
    She shivered. The words―the last words her mother ever spoke―were as haunting as ever. She had been fifteen. She was walking down the street, daydreaming of her bright future as a doctor, or a scientist, or a pop star, or a famous inventor. The car that pulled up asked if she could give directions. Taught by society to be wary, but trusting by nature, when he brought out a map and made a pantomime of being late for his wife in hospital, her good nature won the battle; she approached the car. What happened next was an intense kaleidoscope of shifting imagery... he launched from the car...
    Grabbed at her...
    ...screams from her...
    ...sudden pain...
    ...struggling...
    ...eyes seeing pavement and sky in quick jerky motions...
    ...sound of