Free Haunted Shadows 1: Sickness Behind Young Eyes by Jack Lewis Page B

Quad pro quo,
as my professor likes to say.”
     
    Jeremiah sighed. “Cut the crap. What
do you want?”
     
    “You agreed to let me interview you,
and you haven’t told me a damn thing.”
     
    Jeremiah leant back into the bench
like a kid having a tantrum. The wood rattled under his weight and for a second
I thought it might collapse underneath us. Everything in this village seemed
brittle, as though the houses and the fixtures had rotted to the point of
breaking.
     
    “No wonder Higson was so keen to get
rid of you,” he said.
     
    “Answer some of my questions and I’ll
let you see the diary.”
     
    “I’ll answer one.”
     
    At this rate I was going to have to
investigate the whole thing on my own and then drip feed him the findings one
by one before I managed to coax an interview out of him. This was better than
nothing, at least. I might actually have something to show for the trip.
     
    “Tell me about Bruges.”
     
    Jeremiah put his hand to his rough
beard and looked into the distance. His eyes glazed over and his forehead
creased, as if he was swimming in a memory that threatened to drown him. It was
a look of discomfort that cut through his usual bluster and made me think that
maybe he was human after all. He curled one hand into a fist and gripped it
tightly with his other.
     
    “You remember the student I told you
about? The one Higson sent to study with me?”
     
    “Billy something?”
     
    “Billy Wilkins. He was in Bruges with
me, way back then. We went to investigate a possession case, but he didn’t come
back.”
     
    “I thought you said he was in a
mental institution?”
     
    “I mean he came back physically, but
not all of him returned. A part of him is still there.”
     
    “Are we talking organ thieves?”
     
    “You really don’t understand, do
you?”
     
    Jeremiah’s words trailed away, as if
they had been lapped up by the wind and carried beyond the darkened woodland
and over the bleak hills. There was a cutting tone to his voice, like a hammer
of emotion trying to smash through a stone wall.
     
    “That’s all I’m going to say,” he
said.
     
    He’d only promised me one question,
but god loves a trier, as one of my old foster mums used to repeat endlessly.
     
    “So what about the experiment at the
university, the one you want access to? What’s that all about?”
     
    Jeremiah gave me a stern look.
“You’re professor isn’t what he makes out. He’s a liar, Ella.”
     
    “What do you mean?”
     
    “Let’s just say that me and him used
to study the same things. Only, I stayed true to myself. He got scared and
locked himself away. He abandoned every true thought he’d ever had, put on his
tie and then wasted his life in the lecture halls.”
     
    A car drove down the road at the edge
of the square. It was a family hatchback that looked like it rolled off the
production line in the fifties. There was a dent on the passenger door and the
bodywork needed a respray. I couldn’t see the driver clearly, but he looked
middle-aged. He turned and looked at us, then sank back in his seat. In the
passenger seat next to him, a small shape leaned forward. It seemed to be
covered in shadow, like a little child-sized bundle of black. Gradually
daylight caught the features, and I realised it was a little girl. Her eyes
were wide and white, and black hair spilled over her shoulders. For a second
our eyes locked.
     
    “This place is creeping me out,” I
said.
     
    “The world’s a scary place when you
walk through it with your eyes shut.”
     
    “The world’s a scary place with you
in it.”
     
    “Let’s see the diary,” said Jeremiah.
     
    I held the book tight in my hands. It
felt cold, as though it had spent an hour in a fridge. As I ran my fingers down
the spine I felt a shudder run through my arms, and I slackened my grip. It
felt like I shouldn’t be holding it.
     
    “Hurry up,” said Jeremiah, and
shifted uncomfortably.
     
    I opened the book on the