The house at phantom par.., p.1
The House at Phantom Park, page 1
THE
HOUSE
AT
PHANTOM
PARK
ALSO BY GRAHAM MASTERTON
HORROR STANDALONES
Black Angel
Death Mask
Death Trance
Edgewise
Heirloom
Prey
Ritual
Spirit
Tengu
The Chosen Child
The Sphinx
Unspeakable
Walkers
Manitou Blood
Revenge of the Manitou
Famine
Ikon
Sacrifice
The House of a Hundred Whispers
Plague
The Soul Stealer
THE SCARLET WIDOW SERIES
Scarlet Widow
The Coven
THE KATIE MAGUIRE SERIES
White Bones
Broken Angels
Red Light
Taken for Dead
Blood Sisters
Buried
Living Death
Dead Girls Dancing
Dead Men Whistling
The Last Drop of Blood
THE PATEL & PARDOE SERIES
Ghost Virus
The Children God Forgot
The Shadow People
THE
HOUSE
AT
PHANTOM
PARK
GRAHAM
MASTERTON
www.headofzeus.com
First published in the UK in 2022 by Head of Zeus Ltd,
part of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Copyright © Graham Masterton, 2022
The moral right of Graham Masterton to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
This is a work of fiction. All characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN (HB): 9781801103985
ISBN (XTPB): 9781801103992
ISBN (E): 9781801104012
Cover design: Nina Elstad
Head of Zeus Ltd
First Floor East
5–8 Hardwick Street
London EC1R 4RG
WWW.HEADOFZEUS.COM
For my friend Michael Halperin... with best wishes.
He has the power!
Contents
Also by Graham Masterton
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
About the Author
An Invitation from the Publisher
1
The scream was so shrill and so agonised and it carried on for so long that Alex dropped his iPad on to the bed and ran out into the corridor.
It sounded as if it were coming from the floor below, so he hurried along to the stairwell. By the time he reached it, though, the screaming had abruptly stopped. He stood holding on to the banister rail and looking downwards, his heart beating hard, but there was no sign of anybody down there.
‘Hallo?’ he called out. ‘Hallo? Do you need any help? Hallo?’
He waited, listening, but there was no answer, so he made his way down the creaking oak stairs to the second-floor landing. The hospital was utterly silent now, and gloomy, although three thin shafts of sunlight were shining down the stairwell, with specks of dust floating in them.
‘Hallo?’ he called out again, but only once, because the sound of his own voice was an unsettling reminder that he was supposed to be the only person here. The hospital had been abandoned for over two years now, although beds had been left in many of the wards and private rooms. Some of the beds were still covered by stained and wrinkled sheets. On some lay pillows that were still dented by the heads of the last patients who had rested on them.
Alex walked along the corridor labelled Wellington Wing. There were eight doors on either side, some of them open. The oak floor had been laid over with speckled green linoleum, but it still squeaked when he trod on it. At the far end of the corridor there was a stained-glass window with the crest of the Carver family, whose house this had been before it was requisitioned as a military hospital. A white bull, standing upright. It had a ring through its nose, but it was wearing a zucchetto skullcap and dressed in a white robe like the Pope.
Alex peered into one room after another. Apart from their beds, and their bedside cabinets, and three or four drip stands, they were empty.
He reached the end of the corridor and turned around. Who the hell had been screaming? He was sure he hadn’t imagined it. It was possible that there were squatters in the hospital, and that they had screamed to frighten him away. But it was doubtful that they would have guessed why he was here, measuring the building for its conversion into luxury retirement homes.
He walked back to the landing. He wondered if he should search the whole building, but that would take at least half an hour, and he had to complete his measurement of the upper floor before it started to get dark. The electrical supply was still cut off and wouldn’t be restored until next week, at the earliest.
He had started to mount the stairs when he was sure he heard a door being closed. It sounded as if it had come from somewhere along the corridor on the opposite side of the landing, the Montgomery Wing. That led to a ward with multiple beds that had once been the Carvers’ library.
He hesitated. A strong autumn breeze was blowing outside, and every room in the hospital was draughty, so it was likely that the door had simply closed by itself. But even if some illegal occupant had closed it, was it really his job to confront them? He was a surveyor, for Christ’s sake, not a PCSO.
He took a step upwards, and then another, holding on to the banister rail. He was about to take a third step when he heard groaning. It was the groaning of somebody in both pain and despair, and it went on and on, and grew louder and louder, and increasingly desperate. There was no doubt that it was coming from the Montgomery Wing.
Oh, shit, thought Alex. There’s somebody here and they’ve been badly injured. The least I can do is find out where they are and how seriously they’ve been hurt, and call an ambulance if they need it.
He went back downstairs, walked along the corridor, and opened up the double doors of the Montgomery Wing ward. The last of the orange sunlight was shining in because there were three tall French windows along the left-hand side of the ward, each of them giving out on to a balcony and a view of the woods that surrounded the hospital grounds. The trees were waving frantically in the wind as if they were warning him from a distance to be careful.
There were eight beds in the ward, all along the right-hand wall. None of them had sheets or blankets or pillows, and only one of them had a drip stand next to it, forlornly bent.
The groaning continued, sometimes low and wavering, but then rising higher until it was nearing a scream. Yet there was nobody there – not that Alex could see, anyway. He made his way slowly along the line of beds, ducking his head down to look underneath each of them in turn. The groaning grew even louder and more tortured as he approached the last bed. It was empty, but the mattress appeared to be depressed in the middle as if somebody were lying on it, and he thought he saw the depressions move, as if they were rolling themselves from side to side in agony.
For a few seconds, Alex stared at the bed, both baffled and frightened. The groaning dropped down to its lowest pitch, more like grumbling than groaning, and then it suddenly rose to a triumphant scream. The mattress springs suddenly scrunched, and Alex felt two powerful hands seize the lapels of his jacket. He was pulled violently off his feet and tipped face first on to the bed.
He had no time to fight back. As soon as he sprawled on the mattress, he was gripped between the legs by a pain so intense that he felt as if he had fallen on to a train track and straddled an electric rail – a pain that blinded him and deafened him and made him scream so loudly he thought he had torn the lining of his throat to bloody shreds.
He pitched on to the floor, knocking his head against the drip stand so that it fell on top of him with a clatter. He thrashed and kicked and screamed but the pain was relentless, and if anything it grew more and more unbearable.
He lay there and went on screaming. Outside the French windows, cumulus cloud
Nobody came, and as the hours passed, he lapsed into silence, his eyes closed, wondering how such pain could even exist.
In the darkest hours of the night, he thought he could hear men’s voices, although he couldn’t make out what they were saying to each other. He called out two or three times, but nobody answered. And still the pain went on.
2
‘Look, his car’s here,’ said Lilian, as David turned into the forecourt of St Philomena’s. ‘I can’t understand why he hasn’t been answering me.’
‘Maybe there’s no signal,’ said David.
‘He didn’t have any problem calling me when he first arrived. He said he was making good progress and hoped to have the whole top floor measured before it got too dark. He’s usually so reliable. He measured up that Kingswood golf club conversion in two days flat.’
Lilian climbed out of the car and straightened her skirt. She had put on three or four pounds this week and the waistband was slightly too tight for her. She had sworn that she would stop eating bread but she had been late home every night and instead of soup or salad she had ended up making herself sandwiches. She wished that she had put on her Spanx.
David shaded his eyes with his hand. ‘Is that him up there?’
‘Where?’
‘Up there, on the top floor. I thought I saw him looking out of that window next to the ivy. Well, I saw somebody’s face, anyway. But he’s gone now.’
‘Perhaps you’re right and there’s simply no signal. Let’s go in and see how he’s getting on.’
They crunched across the shingle forecourt to the pillared porch. Lilian was more excited about St Philomena’s than any other development she had taken on. The former military hospital was an imposing brown-brick house in the Jacobean style, with latticed windows and elaborately decorated chimneys. It was surrounded by eighty acres of woodland on the North Downs of Surrey and she knew she could convert it into a stunning residential complex that would sell for millions.
Before she stepped up into the porch, she stopped for a moment and looked around, listening to the soft rustling of the trees all around the house. She had never felt so contented and fulfilled.
‘He’s only gone and left the bloody door wide open,’ said David.
Lilian turned around. ‘He must have got my message after all, and he’s expecting us.’
‘Not very security conscious. Any bugger could stroll in, couldn’t they, and help themselves to whatever they want?’
‘What could they steal? Old hospital beds? I wish they would. It would save us the expense of having them all carted away.’
They entered the hallway with its oak panelling and its faded purple carpet. It smelled of oak, and faintly of antiseptic too. Most of the pictures had been removed, but a portrait of St Philomena’s previous owner, Sir Edmond Carver, still hung beside the staircase. He had a drooping grey moustache, and bags under his eyes, so that he looked ineffably weary, as if life had beaten him down, for all of his wealth, and for all of his achievements as a banker and a great philanthropist.
‘Alex!’ called David. ‘We’ve arrived, mate! Where are you?’
There was no answer, so he called out again.
‘Alex! Are you upstairs?’
Still no answer. David turned to Lilian, with one eyebrow raised, and now he was beginning to looked worried.
‘I was sure I saw him up at that window. But maybe it wasn’t him. I hope it wasn’t some squatter.’
‘Even if it was, what’s happened to Alex?’
‘I’d best go up and see if he’s there, hadn’t I?’ said David, almost as if he was hoping that Lilian would tell him not to bother.
‘All right,’ said Lilian. ‘I’ll take a look down here. Perhaps he’s measuring the cellars and that’s why he hasn’t heard us.’
‘What if that was a squatter I saw?’
‘Then give me a shout. We can always call the police if we have to.’
David reluctantly began to mount the staircase, while Lilian went through to the huge, high-ceilinged drawing room. The only furniture remaining was a single spoonback armchair, pushed into a corner, and all the curtains had been taken down. The carpet had been rolled up, and the parquet floor was strewn with grit and cigarette butts and lumps of plaster. Somebody had abandoned a wheeled walking frame in the sandstone fireplace.
A dusty mirror was still hanging over the mantelpiece, and Lilian caught sight of herself crossing towards it. In a room as vast as this, she appeared to have shrunk, like a character in Alice Through the Looking-Glass. She went closer to the mirror, stood on tiptoe and peered up at herself, and she was pleased to see that she didn’t look as chubby as she felt.
She fluffed up her sharply cut brunette bob and pouted her bright scarlet lips. Her face was round, and she might have a little suggestion of a double chin, but in the happy early days of their marriage her ex-husband, Tim, had always told her how much he loved her chestnut-coloured eyes, ‘like shiny conkers’, and her snubby little nose. ‘Ski-jump nose’, he had called it. But that was before he had lost his job as a reward manager for Price Waterhouse and turned to drink and started to shout at her and hit her and blame her for everything that had gone wrong in his life.
Today she was wearing a black Hugo Boss business suit. She always wore black suits to work because she thought they gave her more authority, and they took attention away from her figure – or at least, she thought they did.
She walked over to the French windows and looked out into the overgrown garden. She had already chosen a site for the tenants’ swimming pool and an elegant veranda with an Italian-style stone balustrade all around it.
She was still staring out of the window when she heard a clattering noise from the direction of the kitchens. She turned around, listening. There was a long moment of utter silence, and then she was sure she could hear someone softly and repeatedly crying out, ‘Ah – ah – ahhh!’
She walked quickly back out to the hallway.
‘Hallo?’ she called out. ‘Is there anybody there?’
There was silence.
‘David? Have you found any sign of Alex yet?’
Still more silence.
She hurried along the corridor that led to the kitchens. Although the kitchen walls were still tiled with olive-green Victorian tiles, all the original stoves had been removed when St Philomena’s was converted into a hospital and replaced with what had then been modern Aga ovens. The oak dresser had remained, though, and two of its top drawers were hanging open, and six or seven kitchen knives were scattered across the red-tiled floor.
Lilian stooped to pick some of them up, but as she did so she heard another breathy ‘Ahhh’ from the scullery.
‘Is somebody there?’ she demanded, trying to sound as schoolmistressy as possible. ‘I hope you realise that this is a private building, and that you’re trespassing!’
There was no reply, so she dropped the knives back into the cutlery drawer, slammed it shut, and went through to the scullery. That had hardly changed at all from Victorian times, with a deep cast-iron sink and two mahogany draining boards, although one of the lower cupboards had been removed to install a dishwasher.
To Lilian’s bewilderment, there was nobody there. She went right down to the end of the scullery, up to the back door that led out to the garden, and tried the handle. The key was still in it, but it was locked.
There was a tall cupboard door beside her, and she opened that up, but there was nothing inside it except an old-fashioned mop and bucket and a broom with most of its bristles missing.
Perhaps the ‘ahhh’ sound had been the hospital’s old plumbing, or the wind blowing under the scullery door. But that dresser drawer couldn’t have opened by itself, and how had all those knives tumbled out?
Lilian waited for a few moments, in case there was somebody in the kitchen, and somehow they had managed to hide, perhaps by curling themselves up inside one of the ovens, although she didn’t have the nerve to open up either of the oven doors to find out. In any case, she told herself, they would have to be a contortionist.
She listened, but she heard no more breathy cries, so she walked back along the corridor to the entrance hall. She glanced back over her shoulder when she reached the staircase, in case she was being followed.
