Free DARK COUNTY by Kit Tinsley Page B

drink. He said that he could fit me in for a few hours.
    We met up at the same pub we had gone to when we had spoken last. As I approached the bar, I was shocked at his appearance. He was stood there waiting for me, his hair was longer than I’d seen it since we left school, and more unkempt than I’d ever seen it. His face was covered in a growth of hair that was beyond stubble, but too patchy to be considered an actual beard. He was dressed in sweat pants and a baggy jumper. He looked pale, and there were dark circles around his eyes.
    We exchanged a few perfunctory pleasantries before taking our drink outside to the beer garden on the riverside. There was no one else out there, which was a good thing as I knew that this was going to end in an argument.
    ‘Why?’ I asked as we sat looking out at the brown water of the river.
    ‘You know then?’ he said, taking another sip of his drink. ‘I guessed you did when you called.’
    ‘Why on Earth would you want to buy that place?’ I said.
    ‘My family needs a new house, here, and it was a great price.’
    I shook my head.
    ‘Because of all the fucking murders that have happened there, or did you forget about that?’ I said, feeling the muscles in my face contracting in anger.
    ‘No,’ he said. ‘I can’t forget that house. I dream about it almost every night, and I couldn’t take it anymore. I knew if I bought it, and lived there, I could prove to myself it’s just a house.’
    I thumped the table.
    ‘That’s just what it wants you to think,’ I said. ‘It draws us in, and makes us do terrible things, Wayne. For God’s sake, think about your girls.’
    He leant over and grabbed me by the collar.
    ‘I am thinking about my girls,’ he said, spitting in my face. ‘Look at the state of me. Do you think having a father who looks and acts like this all the time is good for them? I can’t sleep, I have no energy, I’m short-tempered all the time. Do you think that’s a pleasant life for my daughters?’
    He let me go, and I took a sip of my drink.
    ‘It already has a hold on you,’ I said. ‘Can’t you see it? You know what comes next.’
    ‘It’s just a fucking house,’ he screamed at me. ‘Bricks and mortar, nothing else. No ghoulies, no ghosties, and no fucking curses.’
    ‘Then how do you explain everything that’s happened?’ I screamed back at him.
    ‘Coincidence,’ he said. ‘Nothing more than that.’
    ‘You really believe that?’ I said.
    ‘I have to,’ he said. ‘You know, you’re the one who’s obsessed with that place.’
    He got up and left the table. He started to walk away, then stopped and looked back at me.
    ‘Stay away from my family,’ he said. ‘And my house.’
    With that, he was gone.
    I went home and sat there trying to think of a way I could stop him, convince him that he was wrong, and that his life and those of his family were in danger. He was right, I was obsessed with that house, we all were, and had been since that night fifteen years earlier. Why could no one else see what was so clear to me?
    Something dark had got inside us all, it started that night, and it was still there now, curled up inside us like a sleeping beast waiting to attack. It drew us back there to the house time after time. It had turned two of my closest friends into killers, and had turned Wayne into a stranger I could not even recognise.
    It had to end, there had to be a way. Rob had tried destroying the old house, but it had not helped. Whatever it was, it was in the soil, the air, the land around the house. It could not be destroyed just by removing the house; it infected the new one as soon as it was built. I racked my brains to think of an answer. I had spent my whole life watching horror movies, and reading about the supernatural, surely somewhere tucked in a corner of my mind there had to be an answer.
    Then it came to me. It was so obvious.
    I waited until nighttime and then gathered the things I would need. I set off in the