Chasing the Dark: Encounters with the supernatural by Ben Machell

Author:Ben Machell [Machell, Ben]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group
Published: 2025-08-28T00:00:00+00:00

11

Naughty little girls, naughty little boys

Trudy wakes early and slips out of bed. She pulls on her dressing gown and steps through the family bungalow on soft feet. It is a Saturday morning in July 1967, her sons are still sleeping and her husband is . . . well . . . he is probably somewhere. She is about to enter the living room when she sees something that makes her stop dead. In the cool morning light, there is the figure of a boy sitting on the sofa. She knows, immediately and instinctively, that he is not one of hers. He is maybe twelve years old, is wearing button-up pyjamas and seems to be absorbed in something he is reading on his lap. Trudy does not believe in ghosts or phantasms. But seeing this unexpected child, silent and still before her, makes her place a hand to her mouth. Is she dreaming? Is she unwell? The figure raises his head, revealing a soft, pale face that, upon observing Trudy, arranges itself into an expression of polite inquiry. Slowly, he raises a hand in greeting. All Trudy can do is raise her own in response.

His name is Brian Connolly, Cornell explains to his wife over breakfast. He will be staying with them at Girton for the weekend. Why is that, asks Trudy? Because, her husband replies, he wants to keep the boy under ‘unobtrusive observation’ for forty-eight hours or so. You see, Brian seems to be the focus of an ongoing poltergeist disturbance that he and Alan have been looking into over the past few weeks. There have been violent bangings in the child’s home. Heavy furniture thrown about. A large hole punched through the plaster of his bedroom wall, from which furious, guttural cries have been said to emanate.

And so you thought it would be a good idea to bring this child here? Trudy asks. Yes, says Cornell. Just to see if anything happens when he is removed from the location of the disturbances. Brian’s mother has given her blessing, he reassures his wife. And Alan thinks it could be interesting, to see whether the poltergeist effects are focused on Brian’s bedroom, or if they somehow follow him around. Trudy looks into the living room, where Brian is watching television with David, Martin and John. Cornell logs the time on his wristwatch and makes a few notes. He sips his coffee. She sits in silence for a few moments, then gets to her feet and begins to clear the breakfast table.

Cornell first hears about Brian when Alan calls in the early summer of 1967 to talk over a case. The boy, Cornell learns, lives with his mother in a market town in the East Midlands. The two have recently moved house, and now occupy a small Victorian terrace on a narrow street of back-to-backs. Living with them too is an old woman, a longstanding family friend Brian calls ‘Grannie’, though she is not his grandmother. Brian’s father died some

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