Every Scream Is Real

In four hours, not one guest had caught Caspian Hale making a single careless move.

He stood at the bottom of the grand staircase, right on the worn brass plate set into the floor. One gloved hand rested on the carved post at the end of the banister. The other hung loose at his side. Around him, the Great Hall of Whitlock House seemed to be holding its breath. The black and white floor tiles ran all the way to the far doors, cracked by more than a hundred years of frost. Two curved staircases rose into the gloom and met at a gallery high above. Old portraits of the Whitlock family hung there in rotting frames, and their painted eyes seemed to follow every guest around the room. Overhead, a huge iron chandelier, as big as a small car, swayed on its chain. Every candle in it was real, and the melted wax dripped slowly onto the stones.

It was always cold in the Great Hall. Guests noticed straight away. They hugged their arms, breathed out clouds of white mist, and laughed nervously about how real it all looked. Caspian had stopped noticing the cold a long time ago.

Whitlock House stood on a shelf of black rock high above the village of Valea Corbului. The road up to it was so twisty that the minibus drivers from Brașov crawled along it, and many crossed themselves at the last bend, only half joking. Travel magazines called it the scariest place on Earth. Backpackers flew across the world just to walk through its halls, and then went home with stories nobody quite believed. Nobody could work out how the performers did it. The monsters were too convincing. The screams sounded too real. No haunted house had a budget big enough to explain any of it. And the staff never gave a straight answer when anyone asked, which only made the legend grow.

Caspian knew exactly what he looked like from the doors, because Leo described it to him all the time, usually at great length. He was tall and lean, with dark hair that was a little too long and curled over the collar of a black velvet frock coat. The coat had gone slightly green at the seams with age. A high white collar covered his throat. His skin was as pale as candle wax, his nose long and straight, and his mouth a little too stern. His eyes looked grey in good light and black in every other kind, which in this house meant black, always.

“Like a funeral that learned how to stand up,” Leo had told him the first time. Then he had kissed his own fingertips. “Darling, it’s perfect. Never change.”

The job itself was simple. Caspian had always thought so, although some nights simple felt like the hardest thing in the world. Stand still. Wait. Do not move until the whole group has gathered at the bottom of the stairs. Then step forward, slowly, and choose someone. Hold out a hand. Bow. Speak in a voice so low that the people at the back have to lean in to hear. That was the moment the guests paid for. It was the moment that made grown men scream, and then thank him on the way out.

The Master of the House never moves unless the house moves him. That was Mr Whitlock’s rule, and the oldest one. Mr Whitlock was never seen during a show, but nobody who worked here ever doubted that he was watching.

Caspian was good at reading a crowd. Long before a group reached the doors, he knew who would laugh and who would scream, who would grab a friend’s hand and who would pretend with all their might not to be scared. It came down to listening, the way a conductor can hear every instrument in an orchestra at once. After so many years, he could no more switch it off than stop seeing. Every full house also brought the same dry ache to the back of his throat. Each night he put it away as carefully as he folded his gloves. Leo called it stage thirst and swore every great performer had it. Caspian called it nothing at all, and kept his hands still.

Something rustled beside him, like soft velvet.

“Darling, you’re brooding again.”

Leopold Delacroix didn’t walk into a room so much as take it prisoner. He had a round face, olive skin, and a waxed moustache curled into two neat commas. His plum velvet waistcoat stretched across his middle, with a gold watch chain looped over it like a smile. He talked without moving his lips, a trick he’d perfected years ago for moments exactly like this, and he beamed at the empty hall as if it were packed.

“I’m standing perfectly still,” said Caspian, who also didn’t move his lips.

“You’re standing perfectly still in a brooding way. The paying public wants a fright, not a poem.” Leo straightened a cuff. “Last group of the night, thank heavens. Five of them. One is filming, one is trembling, one has a laminated itinerary in a plastic folder, and one is very, very loud. Give them something to tell their grandchildren, then send them down the mountain before the last bus leaves the village.” He tilted his head and studied Caspian’s face like a sculptor checking his work. “The teeth are a bit much tonight, though.”

“They’re the only honest part of the costume.”

Leo burst out laughing and clapped a hand over his own mouth. “Oh, that’s good. Save that one. Save it for the finale.”

“I’ll do no such thing.”

“Wretch.”

Somewhere above them, water dripped. Then dripped again. A thin dark stream began to run down the gallery steps and pool on the landing, and a voice that sounded as if it came from the bottom of a well sighed through the rafters.

“The house is awake tonight,” whispered Cordelia Gray, from the dark of the gallery. A pale shape moved there: a bride in rotting lace, her veil hanging in soggy ribbons, her hair dripping steadily onto the boards. “Can you feel it, Caspian? It’s listening.”

“Cordelia, my love,” said Leo, “it’s a house. It’s always listening. That’s its great charm.”

“Not like this,” said Cordelia, and she was gone.

Leo’s smile didn’t change. “Places,” he said softly, and left.

At the far end of the hall, the huge doors groaned. Magnus Rook pulled them open with one enormous, scarred hand and stepped aside like a mountain politely getting out of the way of a road. The doorman of Whitlock House stood six and a half feet tall, with a weathered face and a grey-streaked beard. On a good night he said maybe four words an hour. He looked down the long hall and gave Caspian one slow nod. Then the last group of the night came in out of the dark, and the doors boomed shut behind them. A heavy bolt slid home. Magnus melted back into the shadows beside it.

Leo went to meet them with both arms flung wide.

“Welcome, my dears, welcome! Mind the step. Mind the dark. And mind, if you’d be so kind, the management’s one small request.” He swept into a bow, his watch chain swinging. “Please keep your hands inside the house at all times. We accept no responsibility for anyone who wanders.”

“Now, the rules, my dears, and do listen, because I shall only say them once. You go through the house in your group, and you stay together if you can. Our performers will chase you, and they are very, very good at it. But not one of them will lay a finger on you, and you will not lay a finger on them. Run, scream, hide, do whatever you must. Just keep moving.” His smile widened. “The house has so many places to hide, and only one way out.”

“Is that a real candle?” boomed a voice like a dropped crate. “Mate, health and safety would have a field day.”

That was the loud one. He was built like a doorway, with a rugby player’s neck, a sandy beard, and the grin of a man who’d never once been told no. His name was Jonah, because the small woman beside him said it twice in three seconds, the second time through gritted teeth. She was neat and precise, with a long dark braid, a head torch around her neck that nobody had asked her to bring, and a laminated itinerary clutched to her chest like a shield.

“Right,” she said. “Three things. One, nobody wanders off. Two, we stay together. Three, the last bus leaves at midnight and I am not paying for a taxi up and down a mountain, so nobody gets themselves murdered.”

“Anika, you’re adorable,” said Jonah.

“I’m not joking.”

“Guys,” breathed a lanky boy at the back. His bleached curls stuck up like dandelion fluff, and he held his phone out in front of him, whispering to it. “Guys, look at the chandelier. Look at it. That’s real fire. That’s insane. Hang on, hang on, the portraits, the eyes are moving, that has to be animatronic, that is unreal, this is going to be so good for the channel, I’m telling you, content, content, content.”

“Dex, keep it down. I don’t think… it’s just that it’s so cold, and I did say, didn’t I, back at the hostel, that maybe we could…” The last of them had a round pale face and an oversized cardigan pulled down over her hands. She hovered near the door, clearly working out how fast she could get out. “Never mind. Never mind. It’s fine.”

“Relax, Tills.” The voice came from the back, easy and amused. “It’s a haunted house. The worst thing in here is probably the gift shop.”

Caspian didn’t turn his head. He didn’t need to.

He read them the way he always did, by the small signs. The pitch of a laugh. The set of a shoulder. The flutter of a pulse at the base of a throat. Jonah laughed a fraction too loudly, like a drum banged for an audience. Anika kept time like a metronome, ticking things off her list. Dexter practically buzzed, a hummingbird with a battery. Tilly had curled in on herself like a bird in a closed hand.

And the last one wasn’t afraid at all.

She had drifted to the back of the group, hands in her pockets, in no hurry whatsoever. She looked about twenty-six. Her dark hair was in a thick plait that was coming loose in messy strands. She had a tiny silver stud in one nostril and a thin scar that cut through her left eyebrow, which gave her a permanently doubtful look. Her army-green jacket was worn white at the elbows and covered in peeling stickers, including a cartoon cactus. Her boots looked like they’d crossed several continents to get here and had opinions about every one. She looked at the chandelier, then at the portraits. Then, with a slow, curious tilt of her head, she looked straight at him.

The pulse at the base of her throat jumped. Not from fear. From delight.

Caspian, who hadn’t moved in four hours, didn’t move now.

Up on the gallery, a figure stepped out from behind a pillar. Jasper Finch, who played the Butcher, crept into view with a cleaver turning slowly in one hand and a smile that stretched a little too far up his face. He was young and thin-shouldered, with a boyish face made frightening by the dark hollows under his eyes. He never quite looked at anyone’s face. He looked at their throats.

Tilly’s scream shot up like a kettle coming to the boil. Dexter whooped. Jonah roared with laughter, announced that it was all rubber, and pointed at the Butcher to prove it. Jasper’s smile slid sideways and stayed there.

“Marvellous,” said Leo, gliding between the group and the gallery to break the spell. “But our dear Butcher is only the starter. The main course awaits.” He swept an arm towards the staircase. “Come a little closer, my dears. Don’t be shy. He so rarely receives visitors.”

And at the bottom of the stairs, for the first time that night, the Master of the House moved.

It started with his hand. The gloved fingers lifted from the post one at a time, and the hand rose and turned palm up, as if checking the air for rain. His head came round, slowly, so slowly. One guest gasped. Another whimpered. Caspian looked down the length of the hall, and every candle in the chandelier leaned the same way at once.

“Good evening,” he said.

His voice was low and polite, and it carried to the back wall without any effort. In the thick silence, a single drop of wax hit the floor.

He stepped off the brass plate. Once, twice, three steps across the tiles, unhurried, his coat whispering around his boots. The group crowded together without realising it, shoulders touching, like sheep when the wind changes.

“Here he is,” said Jonah, a bit too bright, like a man talking to keep his courage up. “The big man himself. Nice coat, mate. Did you rob a museum?”

“Only the dead, sir,” said Caspian. “They never complain.”

Jonah’s grin slipped by about half a degree.

“I find,” Caspian went on, holding out his gloved hand, “that every group has one person who thinks he’s safe. Come, sir. Let me prove you wrong.”

“Oh, give the man a break, Jonah.” A scuffed boot scraped on the tiles, and the girl at the back pushed through the huddle, hands out of her pockets. “He’s been standing there since the dawn of time. I’ll go.”

“Pri,” said Anika, low and sharp. “Pri, no.”

“Relax, Anika. It’s theatre.”

She stopped in front of him. She had to tip her head right back to look him in the eye, and she did it without the slightest sign of worry.

“You’re either very brave, Miss, or very foolish,” said Caspian. “The house doesn’t mind which.”

“Honestly? Bit of both.”

She put her hand in his. Heat went through his glove like a hot coal through paper. He drew her closer, gently, the way the part demanded, and bent his head until his mouth hovered beside her neck. The whole hall held its breath. He could feel the warmth of her skin without touching it.

“Go on, then,” she breathed, so quietly that only he could hear. “Do the teeth. I want to see what all the fuss is about.”

He pulled back his lip.

She didn’t flinch. “Okay,” she whispered, impressed. “Those are really good. Who’s your dentist?”

Above them, Jasper’s cleaver bit into the banister with a crack like a gunshot, and Cordelia’s scream tore down from the gallery, long and wet and not remotely human.

The group broke like a wave, and the chase began. Tilly bolted for the dark archway beside the stairs. Dexter shrieked with joy and ran backwards, still filming. Anika grabbed a handful of cardigan and hauled Tilly along with her. Jonah, bellowing that it was fine, it was all fine, ran the wrong way entirely and crashed into Dexter. In the crush, his elbow caught Pri hard in the shoulder. She was flung sideways, her hand ripped out of Caspian’s, and her left palm slapped against the banister to stop her fall.

The banister was wrought iron, twisted into a pattern of briar roses. One thorn had snapped off years ago. It had been waiting, bent and bright and jagged, for exactly this.

Pri’s hand came away from the iron red.

The hall emptied the way a bath empties: noisily, and then all at once. Boots slapped across the tiles and vanished into the archway beside the stairs. Dexter’s voice rose, high and thrilled, to announce that he’d got it, he’d got all of it, nobody would ever believe it. Anika’s voice cut through the racket, counting heads. Leo swept along behind the stampede with his arms spread like a shepherd with a very theatrical flock, calling, “Run, my dears, run! The house is hungry, and the gift shop is open until midnight!” Jasper thundered down from the gallery with his cleaver scraping along the wall, and Magnus lurched out of the shadows by the doors with a roar that shook dust from the rafters. Then the whole pack of them was gone, and the screams went racing off through the house.

All but one.

She hadn’t run. She stood a step from the bottom of the stairs, holding her left hand out in front of her as if it belonged to someone else, and stared at her palm. A bright cut had opened across it, from the base of her thumb to the heel of her hand. For a moment it was just a line. Then it filled, and a bead of red gathered at the edge and rolled, slow and perfect, down her wrist.

The smell reached Caspian a moment later.

Copper, first. Then warmth, living warmth, rolling across the cold hall like heat off a summer road. And underneath both, something he had no word for, something like the first warm day after a lifetime of winter. The dry ache at the back of his throat, the one he folded away each night with his gloves, broke loose all at once.

The Master of the House does not move.

He told himself that in Mr Whitlock’s own dry voice, and held on to it. The Master does not break. The Master has never once broken. There were forty-one tiles between him and the dark archway where the passage began, and he counted every one, and then counted them again. Under his glove, the old oak post gave a thin, dry creak. A hairline crack crept up it towards the carved acorn on top.

“Ow,” said the girl, with feeling. “Ow. Bloody hell.”

She flexed her fingers, hissed through her teeth, and looked up. The scar in her eyebrow lifted. “You haven’t moved,” she said. “Not even a twitch. Everyone else legged it, and you’re just… standing there. That is some serious commitment.”

Caspian said nothing. Silence was the safest thing in the house.

“Do you ever blink?” She stepped closer, not scared at all, close enough that he could see the freckles across her nose and the gold flecks in her dark eyes. The pulse at the base of her throat beat like a small, bright drum. “Come on. Just once. For me.”

“You should go,” said the Master of the House, very low.

“Is that a threat or an invitation?”

“A courtesy.”

“Is it, though?” She looked him over with her head on one side, like a painting in a gallery whose artist she was determined to understand. Her gaze dropped to her bleeding palm, then came back up to his face, and a slow, wicked grin spread across hers. “Hang on. You’re a vampire, aren’t you? That’s the whole bit. And here I am, bleeding all over your nice floor. It’d be rude not to.”

Before he understood what she meant to do, she’d pressed two fingers into the blood pooling in her palm. Then she rose onto the toes of her scuffed boots and reached up towards his face.

Caspian held still. It was the hardest thing he’d done in a very long time.

Her fingertip landed on the high ridge of his cheekbone, hot and wet and shockingly alive. It drew a line downward. Then another, a curve and a curve, meeting at a point. When she lowered her hand, she’d left a heart on his face. It was slightly lopsided, the kind a child might draw on a steamed-up window, or someone in a big hurry.

“There,” she whispered. “Happy Halloween, handsome.”

A muscle moved in his jaw. It was the only thing that did.

She saw it. Her whole face lit up. “Ha! Got you. I saw that. Tell the make-up people they’re geniuses, by the way. I’d have sworn you weren’t breathing.”

“PRI!” Anika’s voice rang out from somewhere deep in the passage, shrill with fear and fury. “Pri, now!”

“Coming!” She backed away, still grinning, and saluted him with her bloody hand. At the archway she glanced back one last time. Her pulse, he noticed, was running fast and warm and glad. Then the dark passage swallowed her too.

Far away, a door slammed. A scream rose somewhere inside the walls, then laughter, then another scream, all of it fading as the chase ran on through the house. Silence rolled back over the Great Hall. One candle spat. Somewhere above, a long drip of water hit wood.

Caspian stayed where he was and counted to one hundred, slowly, in case anyone was watching. If anyone was, they gave no sign, although in this house that proved very little.

Then he pulled off his right glove, finger by finger, because his hand had started to shake.

The heart on his cheek was still warm. He touched it with one fingertip and looked at the red there. He told himself, very firmly, that he would not do what he was thinking of doing.

He did exactly that.

It wasn’t a taste. Taste was too small a word. It was light and heat, and a door opening in a wall he’d forgotten was there. The hall went bright around the edges. Warmth poured down his spine and into limbs that had forgotten what warmth was for. A sound escaped him that he didn’t recognise, low and raw and nothing like the Master’s polite voice. His knees buckled. The post caught him, and the old oak split under his grip with a crack like a pistol shot.

He was moving. He was already moving: one step, two, three, off the brass plate and across the tiles towards the dark archway, towards the faint warm trail of her scent winding away into the house.

And then the chandelier flared.

Every candle in it burst into bright flame at once, as if the whole house had drawn a breath. For a heartbeat the cold in the hall faded. A single warm sigh moved through the stones like wind through long grass, and somewhere deep beneath the floor, something old and tight and stubborn loosened by the width of a hair.

Caspian stopped. He stood in the middle of the Great Hall with his bare hand stretched out and the taste of her still on his tongue, and listened to the silence settle.

The candles dimmed. The cold came back, as it always did. On the far wall, the tall mirror in its tarnished frame stayed covered in black cloth, as it had been for as long as anyone could remember, and he didn’t look at it.

“The candles,” he said aloud, to no one. It was a very small, very reasonable voice. It wasn’t entirely his own.

He didn’t give the other thing a name. He stood very still and did what he’d always done with things he couldn’t afford to feel. He put it away.

It didn’t stay put.