PROLOGUE
Most people walked a little faster when passing 42 Randall Lane, picking up the pace as if something about the house might somehow be rotten or contagious or was waiting to spring out and get them. It was entirely different to the others on the street, had been on its plot far longer than the sprawling new estate that had sprung up around it in more recent years. It could be described as a grand dame surrounded by ambitious courtiers, although it wasn’t that grand, just bigger and older and definitely sadder. Out of place, even though it had been there the longest.
Late Victorian in style – red-brick, double-fronted with two windows either side of its rarely-used front door and three more windows on the upper floor. A kid’s drawing of a house, really, with a waist-high dry-stone wall protecting its apron of a front garden, a rusty iron gate at the end of a straight, flagged path, where weeds had pushed their way up through cracks and tree roots were buckling the edges. The back garden, not visible from the street, sloped in gentle tiers down to a stream that circled a small woodland. It was here that one of the worst deeds was said to have happened back in the day.
Everything was quiet over there now – as still as a painting, seeming untouched by winds or weather. Occasionally, someone used the bus stop outside the front gate either to get on or off the bus, but Megan Whitmore, who lived opposite, had never seen anyone go into the house – apart from thepostman, but even he passed it by more often than not. This made Megan sad at Christmas. Did Mrs Ivorson never receive any cards or visitors? Did she ever speak to anyone on the phone or in the supermarket when she went to do her weekly shop?
Had everyone in the world shunned her?
Maybe she had shunned them.
Megan had been ten years old when she and her parents moved into their semi on the Randall Lane edge of the new estate, twelve when it all kicked off at number 42: sirens and flashing lights, helicopters, screams, search parties, news cameras, more police than she’d ever seen in one place before or since.
Andblood.
She hadn’t seen the blood herself, but she’d heard about it. All over the place, apparently, in the hall, the kitchen, up the stairs and in the bedrooms. She used to picture it in her mind’s eye, dripping from banisters, smeared over wallpaper, pooling on carpets. The other kids around had said evil lived in the house, that anyone who went near it would be cursed forever.
Megan was thirty-two now, and the house still creeped her out a bit in spite of how sorry she felt for Mrs Ivorson. None of it was Mrs I’s fault.
Or was it? What did Megan know? What did anyone, come to that? So many rumours, wild and terrifying speculation involving cults and ghouls, sacrifices and mass murder. Everyone had heard something; the whole estate had been bursting to share what they knew about Mrs Ivorson’s daughter, Nicole, and the kinds of things she got up to. Twenty years ago, no one could talk about anything else. Friends, neighbours, the media, Megan’s own family and indeed Megan herself – they couldn’t get enough of it. And the more lurid the tale, the more gripping and real it was made to seem.
For a long time, Megan had more or less forgotten about the events of July 2005, but now she was back in her childhood bedroom at number 39, right opposite, waiting for the flat above her new hair salon to be ready. Number 42 The Mane Collective, as it was to be called, due to open at the far end of Randall Lane in a few weeks’ time.
In the years while Megan had been living elsewhere, she’d only been reminded about the Ivorsons when she came home for visits, although nothing much was ever mentioned then really. Time had passed, people had moved on with their lives, and Megan guessed Mrs Ivorson must have too, in her way, although given what a recluse she’d become how would anyone know?
It was literally freezing outside today, minus three factoring in the wind-chill they’d said on the local news. Frost was glistening its wintry loveliness over pavements and gardens, while icicles dripped and dropped from frozen gutters. The gritters had been out earlier, so traffic was flowing – not that Randall Lane was especially busy, not since they’d made it one-way and put in sleeping policemen to stop speeders.
Megan was all snug in a fleecy onesie, curled up in an old wing-backed chair in her childhood room – too cold to be right up by the window today – iPad in her lap, phone within reach as she worked on updating her accounts. She’d heard that Mrs Ivorson used to be a book-keeper, before everything, working for lots of local small businesses, but that was so long ago it wasn’t relevant now, and anyway, Megan would never have the nerve to ask for her help.
She wondered, as she gazed idly across the street towards the lonely looking house, if Mrs Ivorson would like to have her hair done. She used to have a lovely head of coppery curls, kind of carefree and yet stylish, one of those looks that made it seem like nothing had gone into it when probably a lot had. The last time she’d seen Mrs I, she’d been wearing abobble hat and woolly scarf, her hair all covered up, though Megan knew she’d cut it short a long time ago. It was as if, Megan had thought when she’d first noticed the dramatic change, Mrs Ivorson had decided that her flamboyant curls were in some way to blame for what had happened, so they’d had to go. Now, Megan felt it was probably sadness that had made Mrs Ivorson want to change her look. Her mood, her heart, simply couldn’t live up to the cheerful image created by her lively hair.
Should she go over and offer a freebie? How weird would that seem when she hadn’t been over once in the last twenty years? Her mum had gone, a few times, after Mr Ivorson had passed, just to ask if everything was all right and was there anything she could do. Mrs Ivorson had never invited her in or taken her up on her offer. She obviously just wanted to be left alone to sort out her own shopping, tend her garden, go to her appointments and carry on doing whatever she did inside those dark grey walls.
Spooky or what?
Had she cleaned up the blood by now? Must have, surely.
How dearly Megan would love to chat with Mrs Ivorson, have her tell everything about what had really happened in July 2005. There was definitely more to it than the press had reported. Everyone knew that; even the papers admitted it. They’d made a big deal of it at the time, actually. No one had the real answers, the proper explanation, the inside story on what had actually gone down and why. Not even the police had been able to answer all the questions, and chances were they still couldn’t – although the daughter was definitely paying for what she’d done.
And so she should.
Megan frowned slightly as a van pulled into the bus stop outside number 42’s gate and a youngish-looking man in a padded coat and leather hat with earflaps got out. A moment later, another man all wrapped up against the cold went toopen the back doors of the vehicle and began taking something out: a steel case the size of a boot box, and another case, long and plastic-looking, that could easily contain a gun, but it turned out to be …
Megan sat forward, her heart starting to race with excitement. Another van was pulling up now, this one grey with blacked out windows. Its insignia left no doubt as to which TV station it had come from.
More vehicles arrived, more people got out, all of them shrouded against the wind. She couldn’t quite believe it. It was like watching ghosts morphing back into life, a rerun of what had happened before, except now it was in winter; the last time had been the middle of summer.
‘Mum!’ she shouted, getting to her feet. ‘Something’s going on over the road.’
‘What?’ Ella Whitmore asked, coming into the room, still in her dressing gown and carrying a cup of tea. ‘It’s a bit hot in here, Megs.’
‘Look,’ Megan cried, pointing to the window. ‘Tell me I’m not seeing things.’
Puzzled, Ella went to check and gave a small gasp of surprise.
‘They just turned up,’ Megan told her. ‘Oh my God, Mum! What if … You don’t reckon it’s happened again, do you?’
Ella’s eyes widened before she collected herself. ‘Don’t be silly,’ she scolded. ‘It can’t happen twice. But maybe …’
