The Spirit Box (The Freelancers Book 1) Read online

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  The Spirit Box

  A Freelancers novel

  By

  Lee Isserow

  Copyright © 2017 Lee Isserow

  All rights reserved.

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  Chapter 1

  Its latest victim

  He had been watching the house intently through the day, waiting for night to fall, waiting for the right moment. As much as every sign had brought him this far, nothing about it sat right. He was parked up in a car he had borrowed―stolen would have been more accurate, but he intended to return it. . . eventually.

  The street was picture book London suburbia, a real neighbourhood, where people knew the folks living next to them, houses full of apparently happy families. Hardly the place for nefarious forces to be lurking. But “hardly” and “definitely not” are two very different things, he knew that all too well.

  As with many of the capital's suburban streets, it rarely remained quiet for longer than batches of ten or fifteen seconds at a time. The road was a thoroughfare for the nearby dual carriageway. There was a constant stream of traffic driving back and forth, and he couldn't risk being seen breaking in, not until he was certain this was the right house. There was a part of him that was restless, a part that wanted to act, to do something before it was too late. But, he reminded himself, sometimes the only time to act is when it's too late.

  The old lady that lived in the house pottered around constantly, dusting and vacuuming, polishing and cleaning. She sat down briefly to drink tea and do a crossword, but as soon as she had drained the pot dry, got back to her feet and returned to her regime of making everything spick and span. Something was compelling her to clean. From his view on the street, it felt suspicious, the house looked damn near flawless, the window frames acting as borders for photos from Perfect Elderly Person's House magazine. Maybe that was him projecting. After all, his place looked like the resident was a hoarder who died along ago, and weasels had been cohabiting with squirrels since his demise.

  This could be it, he thought, if it is here, perhaps this is the way the possession has manifested. It wasn't how these things usually went down: it was much more common for these things to make a mess rather than tidy things up. However, as he knew full well, every possession was different, depending on the possessee, let alone the variety of possessor. That said, he couldn't comprehend, if this was the creature manifesting, how it would result in the old woman's death.

  He took a deep breath, let it out with a yawn that he tried to dispel. It had been a long day of staking out the house, on top of a long week of tracking the box with his crude attempts at scrying and divination, from its last location all the way back home in Australia. He almost got caught at the scene of that one, amongst the blood-spattered walls, the grotesque mess of flayed flesh, and skulls that had been pounded into a pink and grey mush―ground to the point he couldn't tell bone from brain.

  He had arrived too late that time, but he had also gone in with a cavalier attitude that was not conducive to getting the job done. This time, he would be smarter. He would not let the creature have its fill, not again. Its path of death and destruction would end there.

  Assuming he was at the right “there”. . .

  The warm embrace of slumber was a spectre on the periphery of his thoughts. Its siren song sounding so inviting. His eyelids growing heavy as he nuzzled into the seat of the car. He had never sat in a heated seat before, it was like a warm baseball glove holding his body. It wouldn't hurt to just knock the seat back a few turns, get more comfortable. After all, he reminded himself, comfort is an important part of stakeouts.

  *

  An ungodly scream woke him. It was dark, night had fallen whilst he had been asleep, and the agonising howl was most definitely coming from the house. He burst out of the car, peeling straight into a run across the road. Damn being seen―there wasn't time for subtlety. His fingers danced through the air just before his shoulder slammed straight into the door, blowing the latch apart into its individual components as it swung open, each of them clanging to floor as they bounced off into the darkness.

  The wail ceased. Sickly slopping sounds, slapping and sloshing somewhere deeper in the house. His ears pricked up, all too aware that there was no logical explanation for why the screaming would stop on his entry. Not unless the creature had finished with its latest victim. Or, worse still, was lying in wait for a more substantial meal. . .

  Cautiously, he stepped from the wooden floorboards on to a Persian-style runner carpet that went along the length of the hallway. It'd dampen his footsteps, and if he were lucky, the damn thing wouldn't hear him coming for it. Not that luck was often on his side.

  Scanning the darkness, waiting for his eyes to adjust, he caught sight of a postcard sitting on a sideboard, a generic 'we tried to deliver' slip, from an unfamiliar courier. He pocketed it, and continued onwards. There were no further sounds in the house, but there was a breeze coming from somewhere ahead. Turning left through the closest door, he found himself in the sitting room, to the left was one of the windows he had been monitoring for the best part of the day. And to the right was the old woman. Or at least, what was left of her.

  Her body lay faced down, clothes torn open from the back, skin ripped apart, revealing her crooked spine and ravaged organs to the world. Lying in a pool of her own fluids that was spreading out, slowly seeping into the carpet around her.

  He cursed himself for not acting sooner. The creature had been there, but whether it was still there was another matter entirely. Tentatively, he walked towards the body, stepping around it, out of the reach of the withered old hands. He had learned the hard way that the hands of corpses he encountered often had a habit of grabbing him at inopportune moments. The door to the back garden was open, sending a cool chill through the house. There was a sound at the door. Not at the back door, but the front, where he had entered. A light, hesitant knock, followed by a shrill voice shouting “Hello?”

  He held his breath. Froze in place. Running into the house was an idiot move, and he knew it. Someone must have seen him. . .

  “Mum? You left the door open again!”

  A daughter. That's why she was cleaning the house. . . not some damn manifestation of the thing that crawled out of her. He grunted to himself softly, there was no time to check the rest of the house, he had to get out of there. Soft, plodding footsteps were already coming his way. He slipped through the back door and darted across the garden. He was too late again, and this one was on him. There was no sign of the creature, no sign of the damn box. Once again, it had slipped through his grasp.

  Chapter 2

  Fiction being broken

  If it were to ever come up in conversation, Ana Brooks would sum up her life as “uneventful”. Not that it ever actually came up in conversation. Nobody was ever that interested in her, let alone her life.

  Clarice's life, on the other hand, was a non-stop thrill ride. Ana had made sure of it. For every dull moment or inaction on her part, her alter-ego, Clarice, had thrown caution to the wind and dived straight in―or in the case of one anecdote, literally dived off a bunch of cliffs in Croatia. That's the type of person Clarice was, the antithesis of everything Ana.

  She hadn't intended her work persona to be that adventurous at first. Initially, her alias was just a carbon copy of herself, but the guys in the chat box and comment threads didn't respond well at all. Even her name was the same back then, albeit with an additional n in the middle, because she was somewhat devoid of creativity or care when it came to d
isguising her identity. It took someone saying that she looked like “A younger, bustier Jodie Foster, but real boring. . .” for her to realise that maybe it was about time to upgrade her online personality. So, after a week off to let all the men forget her, she returned to work in new outfits, with darker, straightened hair, and pornier make up, bringing Clarice into being.

  This job―and she insisted that “job” pushed the definition―was not a lifelong career. Even though Dean, her boss, told her he knew girls that had been working for ten years, making thousands a day, but she wasn't interested in it lasting more than a few years at most.

  It was a stopgap whilst she worked out what the hell she actually wanted to do with her life. Dean lovingly referred to the dilapidated building he owned as “The Factory”, intended as a tribute to Andy Warhol, mass-producing webcam shows rather than art. Ana thought 'The Faptory' would have been more accurate, and saw it more as a tribute to sweat shops.

  Every day she and the other girls walked in through the rusting steel door, a few more flecks of bright blue paint coming off every time it was opened or closed. They walked up the stairs, which were pock-marked with what looked like bullet holes, although Dean assured her―unconvincingly―that they were from tools being dropped. If there was time, they'd grab a cup of instant coffee from the kitchenette, the counter top of which was always covered in stains of mysterious fluids that none of the girls wanted to think about too hard. Finally, they would go to their respective rooms, separated by a paper-thin plasterboard wall, each of which had carpeting and a bed, wallpaper and light fixtures, set up to look as though they were at home in their bedrooms. This was where they would spend the next six hours, as they began the day's “work”.

  It was not glamorous. Not even close. Some of the others got naked the instant the camera turned on, showing off the goods to try and drum up tips straight off the bat. Others liked to tease, giving glimpses of cleavage, bending over in their cartoonishly short skirts, trying to encourage payment to lose an item of clothing one at a time. Ana didn't like either of those methods. The first seemed desperate and tragic―plus it was cold in the Factory. The second route made the job feel all too much like the sex work it was, especially when the other women did private shows, or put their toys to work when the high tips came out. Her method was more conversational, getting to know the people watching her camera, talk about her―Clarice's―life, or ask them about theirs.

  This strategy was divined from something she remembered reading years previous, an article that claimed close to 40% of men who hire sex workers wanted someone to talk to, someone that listens to them. Ana took full advantage of that fact, often having fifty to seventy-five men involved in the group chat at any one time. Occasionally someone crude would pop in, telling her to strip, ordering her to follow their commands. This resulted in the majority of the others ganging up on the unwelcome interloper, which amused Ana to no end. If the rude guests still persisted after that display of quirky chivalry, it only took a mouse click to ban them.

  Every now and then, she'd give in to the more carnal desires of her viewers, but never with a “full show”, as the other girls called it. The closest she got to that was to unbutton her blouse a little, and crossing her arms on her lap, pushing her breasts together to maximize cleavage. Sometimes she'd remove the bra and let them hang naturally, a lot of the guys in her chat room liked that she was a natural woman with no hint of silicone―and a surprising amount liked the hints of stretchmarks she had from all the weight she lost in her late teens. On the days where she wore a short skirt, sometimes she'd cross her legs back and forth, or rest her feet up on the chair, giving them a view of the full length of her milky white thighs, and close-ups of her toes for the guys that were into that kind of thing.

  It wasn't a great job. She played nice with the customers, and pretended to like it as long as the camera was on. But deep down, Ana always longed to be as adventurous as Clarice, to live a life of non-stop action and excitement. However, she was a long way from having the money to go on such escapades. Maybe in six months, or nine if she was less smart about saving. Not that she complained. It paid well for the little amount of effort she put in, and as she often reminded herself, quoting the dinosaurs on The Flintstones: “It's a living,” which given the current economic climate was something a lot of people didn't have.

  She grabbed a pillow from the bed and put it on the chair before sitting down and logging on, briefly looking in the mirror behind the computer to check her hair and make up. Over the past week, she had been scaling back the porn vibes, and was now looking something close to normal. In another week or two of toning it down, she thought she might be able to get to the point where she didn't have to wear any make up at all. Clarice didn't really need that much muck on her face, she was exciting and vibrant all on her own.

  As soon as the webcam fired up, the chat began propagating with her regulars. A thousand messages of hi and how r u today bb. They weren't always the most eloquent of chaps, but she figured that most of them were only typing with one hand, so it was forgiveable. She instantly burst into personalised greetings to them all, directed at their usernames. Her opening gambit was starting as many conversations as possible.

  “Hi BigBoi44, how's your cat doing today?”

  “Hey RogerUgud, did you get around to painting your living room this weekend?”

  “Hola 8inchSpaniard, did you make up with your girlfriend in the end?”

  And on it went, as they slowly typed their responses she would reply back, having twenty, thirty then forty conversations at once. The other women had no idea how she did it, keeping track of it all. They barely managed to pay attention to the threads if they were just talking, let alone if they were naked or involved in self-pleasure. It probably didn't help that some of them had started using remote controlled vibrators that reacted to the sounds of the tips coming in, sending violent ripples of pleasure for every cent that got credited to their account. Whenever the conversation with the other women turned to how she was able to remember all the facts about all the faceless men, she would always shrug and say something like “Just have a good memory, I guess.” The conversation would switch from her as the focus pretty swiftly. Talking to people―real people―was not her strong suit, and the other women certainly weren't as quick witted or quippy as she usually liked her conversation partners.

  As she shifted over to the bed for the fourth hour of the day's session, Ana heard a buzzing from her bag.

  “I'll be right back guys, just got to find my phone.”

  The conversation continued in the chat room, even as she got up and walked to the door, picking up her bag and searching through it. The punters knew her well enough by now, she'd come back to the screen, scroll through in seconds, and catch up on literally everything that was said.

  “Hello?” Standing all the way back by the door, her voice was faint. The chat room still abuzz with queries, responses and comments.

  “No. . . That's not possible. . . “ The bag fell from her hand, settling on the floor with a light thud. The vibrations were louder for the men watching the chat than in the room itself, the guys joking that it sounded like she had a brick in there.

  “I. . . When?” Ana leaned her back against the door, the walls shaking, picture frames rocking on their nails―not that anyone in the chat would notice. Her legs felt weak, and she began sinking down to the floor, a blank expression on her face, lips quivering, eyes wide and rheumy.

  “Okay. . . I . . .Are you okay?” The conversation on the screen came to a standstill. There were no more jokes, no more lewd suggestions, no more chitchat. Every one of her viewers could tell something awful had happened.

  “Good. Okay, I'm coming over now.” She forced herself to her feet, the walls shaking again as she leaned on the door for support. She killed the call and picked up her bag with a shaking hand, turning on her heel, and walking out. For the first time, her regulars got a view of the real world outside Clarice's be
droom. The dull strip lighting flickering above the kitchenette, where Dean chainsmoked and made crude comments to the naked girls as they waited for the kettle to boil.

  The guys in the chat didn't care about the fiction being broken. One by one they sent out messages.

  R U OK?

  Everthin arite?

  What hapan?

  She was not okay. Everything was not all right. The worst thing in the world had happened to Ana Brooks.

  Her grandmother had been brutally murdered, and as if that wasn't bad enough, her mother was the one who found the body.

  Chapter 3

  A desperate time

  He cursed himself. Blamed himself. The old woman's death was on him, there were no two ways about it. He turned in the bed, trying desperately to sleep. Exhaustion had caused this screw up. If he had been well-rested, perhaps it wouldn't have happened, perhaps he would have burst into the house before it was too late, bound the damn thing to the realm, exorcised it painlessly, rather than have it tear its way through the victim's skin, shredding every organ on the way out.

  Woulda, coulda, shoulda. The words went through his head over and over. There was no point dwelling on it, that wouldn't take it the hell back. Yet he continued his self-flagellation regimen. It wasn't often he screwed up this badly.

  Sleep, it seemed, was not an easy goal. There were so many thoughts, all of which were piled on top of the guilt running back and forth in his mind like a damn relay race. He grunted and sat up, the duvet sliding down his torso, revealing leylines of intricate scars from his neck, past his pecs and abs all the way down to the bones of his hips and beyond. The patchwork of a past he wished to forget, woven into his skin to insure he never could. He pulled himself back, his knees up, resting his head in his hands. Needed more leads, a handle on where the damn thing came from, maybe that would tell him who acquired it, and where they intended to use it next.