* * *
Bald Jim didn’t discuss the previous day’s events with Owen again, although he asked about the plaster on his forehead. Owen described falling over the box of tiles in the kitchen during a midnight foray for snacks, and Bald Jim promptly moved the obstacle and lectured Owen on tripping hazards. Satisfied he had taught Owen a lesson, Bald Jim and his crew got back to work, moving through the tasks on their schedule. They had weeks of work left to do, and every day there was a new minor crisis or bill to pay. Owen had little time to dwell on the skulls’ unnatural behaviour, but whenever his thoughts idled their cries reverberated in his mind.
He startled when a table saw shrieked, thinking it was the skulls again, but instead it was the reassuring sight of Roger, wearing protective earmuffs, cutting floorboards. He thought of the twins’ skulls, sitting covered in his bedroom. Listening to a new generation of people readying the house for occupation. He considered all the various families they had haunted, until they were boarded up. How many people had they eavesdropped upon? How many people had gone about their daily business unaware that the dead twins spied upon them?
That evening he drove to The Adder’s Knot in the nearby hamlet. It was a small but well-appointed pub that had made some concessions to the twenty-first century. It had wi-fi and a good local cider, but the few regulars in that night were elderly couples and bachelor men who were territorial about their seats.
Thaddy was in his sixties with a huge pock-marked nose and red cheeks. He eyeballed Owen as soon as he entered, and moved along the varnished oak counter to greet him.
“What’ll it be?” he asked, a touch gruffly.
Owen ordered a soft drink, and quickly added, “And whatever you’re having for yourself,” once he saw Thaddy’s spectacularly bushy eyebrows rise in surprise to meet his unruly hair.
“You’re Spencer’s nephew?”
“Ah, great-nephew. Owen, pleased to meet you.”
Thaddy placed the glass clinking with ice in front of Owen. “Not a drinker?”
Owen considered being evasive but guessed Thaddy wouldn’t abide bullshit. “Yeah, I’m sober. It doesn’t agree with me.”
Thaddy nodded solemnly as he poured himself a whisky. “A man should know his limits.”
Owen imagined this was a subtle warning that The Adder’s Knot wasn’t a place for a heart-to-heart. Instead they discussed rugby for an hour.
Eventually they got onto the subject of local legends and folk tales. Thaddy had a couple of whiskies in him and the customers had thinned out. There was only a tiny wizened man in a cap nursing half an ale at a table in front of the telly.
“Spencer knew plenty about local history,” Thaddy said. “He was an old git – rest in peace – but he liked reading.” Thaddy shook his head as if this was a shocking habit. “He even wrote a couple of pamphlets.”
“What?”
Owen had only met Uncle Spencer once, when he was ten, so he knew little about him.
“There’s got to be some of them knocking about in his – your – house. Library might have a copy. Spencer was right proud of them.”
Thaddy rose stiffly from his stool behind the bar and reached for the hanging bell. He rang it twice. “Time, gents! Finish up, please.”
Owen drove through the deserted, hedged lanes to his house, and after a quick sandwich headed up to bed. He tugged back the cloth to peer into the jail and check on the prisoners.
They didn’t appear to have moved. They made no sound.
He sat down in front of them, cross-legged, and told them all about his pub outing.
* * *
That night he dreamed of Faith and Fred as children, living with their mother in a small house on a farm near a copse. The children played in the woods in a little lean-to they built, and in it they hung a variety of trinkets and tokens they had found or crafted. Fred had a talent for carving figures in wood. They were uncannily like the subjects he chose: a badger, a crow, a toad, his sister and his mother. Their woodland father. Faith’s voice was unearthly, divine. When she sang, the birds marvelled.
The twins devised special games and chants. They charmed the moths and snails. They played with their huge, grey cat, which was a cunning mouser. She often brought them mauled birds and rodents as offerings. The children buried them in a little graveyard they created and erected twig crosses as markers. They conducted their own burial rites in their green cathedral, singing odd hymns with angelic voices.
And when the little family visited the village, which was rarely, a stream of whispers followed them.
* * *
Owen woke up, his head muggy, his shoulder tender, and his mood poignant. He knew some of the tragedy waiting for the family. They just wanted to be left alone. Why couldn’t people let others be?
Later, to the tune of hammering and banging, Owen dug through the boxes of books and knick-knacks he had earmarked for charity shops. He hadn’t looked too closely at any of their titles since to his eyes they were a bunch of boring history books, a subject he’d failed in his GCSEs.
He almost missed the slender volume despite his thoroughness. It was slotted inside a large hardback book about the history of the Viking invasion. It had a woodcut print on the cover depicting a couple of crooked imps playing the drums and fiddle for dancing hags in pointed hats. It was titled Tales of Vanished Villages and there was his grand-uncle’s name: Spencer Creaser.
Owen brewed a mug of coffee, heavy with milk, and retired to his bedroom to read. He’d left a corner of the cage uncovered so Faith and Fred could get some air while he was out of the room. He pulled the cloth back further so the pair had a better view. He showed them the book.
“Spencer was an author. Fancy that.” He felt strangely proud of the man. As if his relative’s literary achievement somehow opened a possibility for his future. Like he could have that same talent in his veins.
He read the preface, in which Spencer credited his grandmother for his interest in history and folklore: She had a story for every croft and bole, and none were the same. She collected the skeins of the past and wished them rewoven.
Owen regarded the index. One category was “Fairies, Boggles, and Wee Folk”. But the section that arrested him was “Screaming Skulls”.
Much to his surprise there were several examples. Skeletons that were restless and loud in graveyards were disinterred and returned to their homes, and over time, most of their bones were lost, until only the skulls remained.
Some of the early peoples of England were head-hunters and kept skulls as trophies. Many cultures consider them the receptacle of the vital spirit. The practice of pilgrimage to visit decorated saints’ bones in jewelled reliquaries remains popular. In other lands they are brought out each year, to be fed and feted. Sometimes they communicate prophecies or act as guardians of ancestral knowledge. To hear their voices is a sign of someone attuned to a peculiar realm.
Owen looked up from the pages and regarded the skulls. They looked back at him. He frowned. What a shite superpower.
He skimmed through the stories until he spotted an entry that caused his pulse to speed up: Caldwere Farm.
It is said that Caldwere Farm became the property of a widow of striking beauty, who had twin children called Faith and Fred.
Owen blinked and read the words again. They were real. He glanced over at the skulls in their draped shrine. From below he heard a barrage of hammering, and voices raised. Something shifted, as if the house’s axis had moved minutely. “That’s got it,” he heard Tall Jim shout. Then all was quiet again.