Prologue

It was a bright and sunny day when Hamish woke up, but because it was January, the light was somehow anaemic, neutered. It came through the window in a neat square, directly upon his pillow, and he groaned quietly, reaching up and pressing the heels of his hands against his tired eyes. Pressing his face to the pillow did naught at all to drown it out, but he tried anyway, his mouth twisted in a somnolent scowl. One knew from how the light landed that there was no true power in it, no heat, and yet for all that, it seemed so much the brighter.

Reluctantly, he opened his eyes.

He did not usually use an alarm clock. For all his attempts at sleeping in over the years, he had never succeeded in sleeping past nine o’clock in the morning at the very latest, and as it stood, it was a little bit before eight.

Sighing, he pulled himself to the edge of his bed, drawing himself reluctantly from beneath the warmth of his coverlet, blindly putting his feet into his slippers as he reached for his spectacles.

He did not get dressed right away – it was a Monday, and he never opened the shop on Mondays. He had an appointment late in the evening, customising a chair for a gentleman with rather particular tastes, but that was all for the day. He drew his dressing gown down from its neat hook on the back of his bedroom door, pulling it on and belting it shut over his belly.

This had been the dressing gown he had used since Christmas, and yet it felt so incredibly decadent, lined as it was with a plush, black fleece that was ever-so-soft to the touch. Hamish was a gentleman inclined to life’s small pleasures, where they might be found, but this particular dressing gown was beyond, and he allowed himself a moment to huddle in its sleek, black warmth – rather too sleek to suit him, actually, and somewhat at odds with the cheerful yellow flannel of his pyjamas, but what did it matter?

It had been a gift.

One was allowed to enjoy a gift.

He brushed his teeth whilst ignoring the chattering din of the shadows behind him, as he did every morning. He washed his face with a flannel, and combed his blond hair – it was thinner than he would like, although it was a mercy he was not bald as a cue ball, as his father had been once upon a time – back from his face, and then he went downstairs.

The stairs creaked under him as he stepped on each one, grateful for the fleece lining of his slippers to protect him from the hardwood’s cool morning bite, and he moved to put wood on the fireplace that dominated the living room, laying kindling in amongst it and then lighting it with a match.

How many fires had he lit in his lifetime, just like this? Kneeling on the rug with a match in his hand, feeling the sudden heat against his skin before he laid it onto the fire? People didn’t really do this anymore, most people. He stared into the embers as they came to life, licking at the logs before working to devour them.

Behind him, beyond the sleek blackness of his dressing gown, there was a deeper, darker blackness, and try as it might, the morning light could make no penetration of it. He felt the eldritch weight of that blackness behind him, looming over his shoulders, and heard the soft, chittering whispers of the horde at the very edge of his hearing.

It was an inhuman sound, insectile in its multitude, and insectile, too, in the way it buzzed and hummed, subsumed by a vibratory note that one would never hear in a voice from something… natural.

The horde grew louder, louder, until it sounded like rolling thunder in Hamish’s ears, the noise of it all running down his spine like the accompanying lightning strike. Sighing, he sat back upon his heels, his palms against his knees.

“Yes, yes, I know,” he said, finally, and the horde was abruptly as silent as anything, anticipatory, hungry, for what he would say next. “Time for breakfast.”

The darkness became a hundred smaller, rushing shadows as the horde rushed toward the kitchen, cackling and laughing and falling over themselves, and smiling ruefully – fondly, goodness, how fond he was – to himself, feeling the tired ache in his knees, Hamish pulled himself back to his feet, and made to turn on the stove, as he did every morning.

The horde waited impatiently for its customary breakfast of bacon and eggs.

Chapter One

Velma’s chin rested on the back of her hands, which were folded on the surface of the kitchen counter. Beside her, asleep in his basket on top of one of the kitchen stools, was Snowdrop, the flat-faced British Longhair that her brother, Kaito, had taken to walking on a lead around the area in the evenings. Snowdrop’s basket was apparently here because he liked to be involved in kitchen activity, but he didn’t seem very involved to Velma: the cat was flat on his back with his mouth was wide open, his eyes tightly closed, and now and again his tail would twitch.

It was not yet ten o’clock, but she had no seminars to get to today, and she was allowing herself the rest of the day off before she went home to work on her Klimt essay. Kaito had already gone to school, and her mother was at work.

She’d been sat down for a few minutes now, and it was already grating at her: this morning, she’d changed the filter on the extractor fan in the kitchen, put together the new flatpack desk Kaito hadn’t yet had time to set up, and mowed the lawn. She wanted to go and comb the antique shops around Nottingham before she headed home, but half of them didn’t even open until eleven, and the idleness was making her twitch.

“Have you been talking to Aunt Ginchiyo, recently?” Daisuke asked, and Velma shook her head, reaching across to scratch Snowdrop’s face, her thumb scratching at his ear as he shoved his cheek into her palm.

“Not really,” Velma said. “I’ve been focusing on assignments for my seminars, and I’ve just finished two big essays, one more on Klimt is due in soon. Between uni, karate, and work, I haven’t been talking to anybody much. Haven’t had a day off in months, actually. I don’t think I’m accustomed to it.”

“And the work?” Daisuke prompted.

“Haven’t had any specialist jobs,” Velma said. “I’ve mostly been shifting Observers and Ladybird books recently, and I picked up a box of pristine Rupert annuals from the fifties the week before last.”

“What, no antiques?” her father asked, looking stricken.

“Some Dinky toys, but normally when I work with antiques it’s when I come across something for free, Dad, and it’s worth selling on.”

“And no one’s been calling you for more… unique cases?”

“Not since before Christmas,” Velma said, extricating her hand from beneath Snowdrop’s head to drink the last of her hot chocolate, which was very nearly cold. “And that was all little stuff.”

“You need to promote yourself,” her father said sagely, and Velma rolled her eyes, leaning down so that she was nose-to-nose with the now-upright Snowdrop, who looked up at her with sleepy, green eyes and his mouth still open. She’d never known a cat to look so incredibly stupid.

It was funny, she thought, that her dad was so intent on her focusing on the antiques work. When she was a lass, growing up in Glasgow, he’d had his own shop, and she’d learned all about the different things they had in stock, the different styles of furniture, but it was Aunt Ginchiyo that had done the unique work, the specialist cases, and she was still going.

The fact was, people that came into genuinely haunted or enchanted objects normally did so on purpose, and were in contact with appropriate authorities on the subject – and most people didn’t want that authority to be twenty-four years old and pursuing an MA in Art History. The jobs that Velma was ordinarily called out to were for the uninitiated, for mundane people who’d stumbled on a magical object and didn’t know how to get rid of it, and needed someone to safely take it off their hands.

“Do you want any errands running before I drive back down to London?” she asked, watching as her father poured more batter into a series of paper cases, expertly twisting his wrist so that he didn’t spill a single drop from one case to the next. She’d been sat still for far too long. “Your guttering looks—”

“Our gutters are fine,” Dad said.

“When was the last time they were cleaned?”

Her father was quiet, and Velma could see his expression in the reflection of the window, apparently trying to think of what the correct answer was.

“Dad, they’re meant to be done twice a year.”

“I know that!”

“I’ll do them.”

“No, no, Velma, there’s no ladder, and I don’t want you all the way up there, anyway. I can do it.”

“You’re terrified of heights.”

“We’ll hire a man!”

“Do not hire a man, it takes twenty minutes and a—”

Her phone was vibrating, and she picked it up, frowning at the unknown number. It was a house phone, with a Nottingham area code, but she didn’t recognise it, and she glanced at her father, who looked sheepish.

“I was wondering when that would come,” he said.

“Explain,” Velma replied, and her dad sighed, leaning back against the cupboards.

Her phone kept vibrating on the kitchen countertop as he talked, and Velma looked at the unknown number flashing on the screen sceptically before looking back to her father. Her father broke eye contact, instead focusing on the trays he was pulling out of the oven, setting them more neatly on counter.

“So this,” Velma said, “is your friend Marnie from your book club’s friend Rebecca’s florist’s Aunt Terry?”

“Probably,” Dad said. “That’s what Marnie was telling me, that she’d probably call.”

“And she’s calling me, because you told Marnie—”

“I gave Marnie some of your business cards,” Dad said, rubbing the back of his neck. Velma stared at him, her lips pressed loosely together, her arms crossing over her chest.

“I don’t have business cards, Dad.”

Dad coughed slightly, running a hand over his head, which in the past few years had gone almost entirely bald. He didn’t make eye contact with Velma as he said, making careful use of the passive voice, “Some business cards might have been printed for you.”

“Dad.”

“So answer the phone!”

“I didn’t consent to—”

“Answer it!”

Velma picked it up, bringing it up to her ear. “Velma Kuroda, sorry for the delay. Who’s calling?”

“Erm, hello,” said the voice on the other end of the line. It was hoarse and thready, the voice of an elderly woman, and Velma had to lean into the phone slightly, squinting her eyes and twisting her mouth in concentration as she tried to hear her better. “My name is Terry Alderman, and I was told I might phone you, erm, I got your number from—”

“Don’t worry about that, Mrs Alderman,” Velma said quietly, using her professional voice, calculated for maximum comfort and understanding. When Dad gave her an approving nod and a pair of thumbs up, she threw a tea towel at him. “Why don’t you just tell me what it was that made you want to get in contact?”

“Well,” the old woman said, and Velma could hear the thickness in her voice, the slight sharpness to her next intake of breath. She could see, in her mind’s eye, the woman at the other end of the line, perhaps leaning one hand against the end table, huddled in her housecoat – there was no doubt in Velma’s mind that this woman still had a rotary telephone in the hall beside the door, where the line had been installed by her parents, or perhaps her grandparents – and Velma could see, too, the threat of tears at the corner of the old lady’s eyes. “Well, it’s— It’s rather hard to explain, it started…” She trailed off.

“Mrs Alderman,” Velma said kindly, standing up from her seat at the kitchen table and beginning to pull on her coat. “Why don’t you give me your address?”

“Thank you,” Dad mouthed at her as she scrawled the old lady’s address on a spare piece of paper before getting her other arm through her coat, and Velma gave him a distracted wave as she walked out to the door to put her shoes back on.

*    *    *

It was a sunny day, but the light had a deadened quality to it, the sky an unhealthily wan colour. The streets of Nottingham were busy enough, but she was lucky to avoid the bulk of the traffic as she moved out to Sherwood, and as she pulled in front of the old brick house, she took a moment to look at it from the car.

It was built, she would guess at a glance, in the late 1800s, and as she took in the red brick and the black-painted, stylised eaves, the arches around the windows, she inhaled and exhaled slowly, counting out her breaths. It was always important to make sure she was centred before she went into a new house.

Reaching under the passenger seat, she pulled out her briefcase and left the car behind her to move up the steps toward the house. The garden was slightly overgrown, the lawn sprouting up from the ground, but the pots along the decking at the front of the house were all beautifully maintained, and the bench beneath the front window was impeccably varnished and in good condition.

She stepped up to the door, using the brass knocker (early twentieth century, a novelty one that didn’t match the other fittings on the door, depicting Lord Nelson looking nobly outward) in absence of a bell, and looked down at the welcome mat, which was plain, hard brush. Scraping her shoe slowly over its bristles, she saw a chalky red residue come away from her soles, and she glanced back to the path she’d come up.

Where she’d walked on the pebbled path, the soles of her Mary Janes had left visible imprints, and yet it looked like the red residue was coming up from the ground to meet where she’d stepped, because it all but bled up around the stones themselves.

It was too dark to be clay, and as she knocked the knocker again, she leaned on the wall to bring her shoe up, touching her fingers against the bottom of it, feeling the stuff’s texture. It was thick, congealed, and when she brought it up to her nose, the metallic scent of it was unmistakable.

The door opened, and Velma looked at the old woman in the doorway, looking very small, wearing a burnished red housecoat and with her hair tied neatly up with matching red silk. Her eyes, which were a light-coloured brown, were watering, and she took Velma in, her mouth slightly open.

“The orange is overpowering, I know,” Velma said quietly. Past Mrs Alderman’s shoulder, she could see the mahogany table to the left of the hall, beside a brass bucket that contained umbrellas and walking sticks: the telephone was a dark red, some of the numbers worn off the dial, and rested neatly on its own cloth. Velma was almost surprised not to see a box for calling cards beside it.

“My girls, the grandchildren, used to love Scooby Doo too,” the old lady said, and Velma smiled, putting out her hand to shake. Mrs Alderman’s hand was shaking, the wrinkled palm cold to the touch, but Velma didn’t comment on this as she shook it. “Velma… Karooda, is it?”

“Kuroda, Mrs Alderman,” Velma said mildly as Mrs Alderman ushered her inside, and she bent down to unstrap her shoes, setting them neatly aside on the shoe shelves beside the door, feeling the old woman’s approving gaze on her back as she hung up her coat, too. She saw more of the bloody residue stuck to the dark wood of the shelves and the coat rack, too, noting the way it smeared.

“And you’re, ah, Chinese…?”

“I’m Scottish, actually,” Velma said. “But my family are Japanese.”

“Oh, how nice,” Mrs Alderman said, slightly woodenly, and Velma could see her trying to do the internal mathematics this answer apparently required. “Well, you must have some slippers. The floors are so cold.” She pulled open a drawer beside the shoe shelves, setting a pair of white slippers down on the floor, and as Velma slid them onto her feet, Mrs Alderman led her further into the house.

Noise carried well. The corridors were wide-walled and high-ceilinged, and there were no rugs on the floors or hangings on the walls, the only decoration to the latter the carved pattern on the dido rail, and the transition from the wood siding to the red-painted wood. It was uncommonly dark inside, although the lamps let out a golden glow, between the ebony floors and wall siding and the dark red paint, but the kitchen was a little better, wan light streaming in through the windows and reflecting off the wood-lacquered surfaces, and the robin’s egg blue of the cabinets.

“You have a lovely home, Mrs Alderman,” Velma said as the old lady went to flick the kettle on. “I love seeing a kitchen keep all the Victorian features.”

“It’s important to keep these things going,” Mrs Alderman said, taking two cups from a tailor-made set of shelving. The china had a pattern of wildflowers, the rims dipped in gold, and the sight of them made Velma smile.

“Limoges, are they? Haviland & Company?”

Mrs Alderman turned, and her chapped lips turned into a bright smile, despite the exhaustion Velma could see her in her features. Here, in the light, she could see the old woman’s face better. There was a purpling bruise on the side of her temple, and dark shadows under her eyes were only almost-obscured by the make-up she wore. Based on the slight swelling at her lower lip, Velma guessed that had been split in the past week or two, too, and was only just healing shut.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              

“Yes,” she said enthusiastically, pouring the boiling water into a teapot. “The set was a wedding gift, for my mother. Her father brought them all the way from Limoges, packed them in all the tissue he could because he was so frightened of even chipping a saucer, and on the night my mother first used the set, he dropped the tray with the sugar pot on it.” Demonstratively, she picked up the sugar pot in question, and Velma laughed softly as she stroked the seam in porcelain where it had been repaired with staples. “That was when people used to repair things, of course,” the old lady said, slightly haughtily. “Instead of tossing everything away and beginning anew all the time.”

“Of course,” Velma murmured, tracing the dark seam in the pale china, where it bisected a delicately painted narcissus. “And do you often buy yourself antiques, Mrs Alderman? Is that where the situation arose?”

“Well, no,” Mrs Alderman said, and Velma saw the hesitation in her face, saw the stiffness come back into her shoulders. She looked old and haggard – she looked frightened, and Velma felt a pang in her chest as she looked up at her. How old was she? Seventy? Eighty? For an old woman to be living on her own, to be dealing with something like this… “No, erm. Well.”

She set two cups and saucers each side of the small kitchen table, gesturing for Velma to sit down across from her, and Velma did so, sipping at her tea as she watched Mrs Alderman stare down into hers, her gaze faraway.

“When did the problems start occurring?” Velma prompted her after a few moments of silence had passed between them, and Mrs Alderman glanced up at her.

“A few months ago,” she said. “But they didn’t start all at once, you see. It’s— It’s rather awfully dreadful, now, but it wasn’t, not in the beginning.”

“It never is, Mrs Alderman,” Velma said. “These things take time to take root.”

Mrs Alderman nodded, setting her cup down on the saucer, and she carefully interlocked her fingers, resting her hands on the table as she looked at its dark wood. Then, softly, sounding almost embarrassed, she said, “We used to have an old house out in Ingoldmells. My granddaughter, she and her husband live in Skegness, and when I mentioned it, they said it was awful that the house was left to rot and not being used, you know, when they might do it up and rent it out, or sell it on. My father used to have property all over, you see, but this house belonged to an aunt of mine, and we visited once or twice, I only really remembered it existed when Sophie mentioned that they’d driven through Ingoldmells a few weeks ago.”

“Right,” Velma said, taking a few notes on a piece of paper. “And how old is the house? Like this one, Victorian?”

“I think so,” Mrs Alderman said, nodding her head. “Well, I had to go searching for the keys, because I actually had them in a box of old papers – my father, when my aunt died, had set the keys aside in the envelope with the paperwork. I remember, I asked once, why we shouldn’t have a holiday home so close to Skegness, and at the time… At the time, he just sort of waved me off, you know, and I thought nothing of it.

“But when Sophie asked, I found the keys, and I went with her and her husband, Douglas, out to have a look. I only very distantly remembered it – I was such a little girl, you see, when last we’d visited my aunt, I couldn’t have been older than nine – but it was very well-kept. The windows hadn’t been smashed, no one had tried the door, or anything – you know, this house had been left vacant for almost a century, it ought have been in some state of disrepair!”

She paused, glancing upward, as if it as a sudden noise, and Velma listened carefully, for anything happening upstairs, footsteps, voices, but heard nothing at all.

“Inside,” Mrs Alderman said softly, “inside was the same. No dust. No graffiti on the walls… Sophie and Douglas were delighted – it meant so little work, you see, they’d only have to do a few things to bring it up to the new code, and I was somewhat unnerved, initially, but I suppose it was just so strange I didn’t have it in me to keep wondering. So, we began to go through the furniture, you know, to see if there was anything worth keeping, and I think whatever—”

She flinched, again glancing upward, and Velma pursed her lips together when she saw the old woman shiver.

“All of my aunt’s things had been taken out of the house – her clothes, the photo albums, her china, and so forth. It was only the furniture left, so I brought some home.”

“And do you still have all of it here in the house?”

Mrs Alderman shook her head. “I thought it was these little statuettes, because they were strange looking things, but I smashed them, you see, and it did nothing. Erm, I brought home an old screen, a dressing screen, you know, and, erm, two chaise longs, a mirror… Some paintings, but those are all set aside, wrapped in paper. And we sold the rest.”

“Do you have any photographs of the statuettes?”

“Erm… I don’t have a, a phone that takes—”

“That’s alright,” Velma said immediately. “Could you describe what they looked like?”

“They were white ivory, a sort of heavy, polished bone, painted all over in black paint. Complicated patterns on them, too, sort of like, sort of like lizards, you know, twisting over one another. When you put the two statuettes together, they…” Mrs Alderman trailed off, shaking her head. “Sophie was entranced by them, you see, but I couldn’t stand the idea of her taking them home. Seemed so very evil, they did – when you looked at them, you could see the lizards coiling, as if the two little statuettes were becoming one thing…”

She shuddered.

“Couldn’t let her take them home, not to her children, you know. So I brought them here instead. I put them on the mantelpiece in the drawing room, as I never really go in there, thought I’d not notice them.”

“And is that when the incidents started?”

“No. No, you see, I couldn’t— I couldn’t stop going in there. I’d wake up in the morning and put the kettle on, wander out of the kitchen, and before I knew what was what, I’d be sat on the sofa in the drawing room, just… watching them. You’ve no idea how, how horrible it was, I almost thought I could feel those horrible, scaly coils all over me. Kept finding myself there, every time, and I tried to put them out with the bins, but I’d come down the next morning and there they were…”

“And it started in earnest after you smashed them?”

“Yes.”

Mrs Alderman sniffed, and Velma held out a packet of tissues from the inside pocket of her cardigan, waiting patiently as she wiped her eyes and blew her nose. She inhaled, shaking her head.

“You must think I’m such a silly old lady,” she said. “But it— I’m not imagining it, I really don’t think I am. I hear these noises all the time, now, scratching in the walls, pattering on the floors, and I wake up all hours feeling those coils all over me, strangling me, creeping down my throat!” She blew her nose again, letting out a quiet sob.

“I believe you, Mrs Alderman,” Velma said quietly. “And I’m here to help. Would you show me everything you brought back?”

“What will you— What will you do?”

"Well, it depends on what we're looking at, Mrs Alderman. If this is some kind of what we call a curse – a curse being a kind of enchantment attached to an object or location, which ends up imparting negative effects on the surrounding area – then I'll try to dispel it, or break it. If it's anything along those lines, if it's any kind of spellwork, there'll be a few different directions I can go with. However, if it's something alive, I'll have to somehow contain it, which might involve taking whatever object it's connected to away from you."

"Something— Something alive?" Mrs Alderman repeated, looking slightly green around the gills, as if the thought itself was a nauseating one. "Like what?"

"It might not be the case, Mrs Alderman," Velma said, standing up from her place at the table and draining the last of her tea from the cup. She glanced down automatically to look at the dregs of leaves in it, but it was nothing more than thoughtless habit - Mrs Alderman used teabags, of course. "Why don't we have a wee look, hm?"

The chaise longs were both clear. They were nice, solid things, early 18th century, and it was easier to put Mrs Alderman at ease by telling her about the manufacture of her furniture – it was plain that the woman ordinarily had a passion for interior design, especially for antiques, that had been shaken by recent experiences. The mirror, which had been set to hang in the stairwell, was a handsome thing with gold filigree all around its edges, and although it was a 20th century reproduction of a much older piece, Mrs Alderman still plumped herself up like a pleased hen when Velma said how well it suited the hall.

If the darkness was oppressive downstairs, it was even worse on the first floor of the house, thick curtains covering the windows at the ends of the corridors and heavy doors ensuring that not even small cracks of light came out from any of the rooms. The light from the lamps up here was heavily shaded, tinted red by the shades in question, and Velma allowed Mrs Alderman to lead the way into a beautifully appointed bedroom, which was decorated in chocolate and tan shades. It was, truth be told, a little bland compared to the rest of the house, lacking a lot of the ornate styling found in the other rooms, but Velma liked it – it wasn't distracting, but quaint and comfortable, just as you'd want a bedroom to be.

"This is the screen," Mrs Alderman said, pointing, and Velma smiled slightly as she came toward it, drawing her fingers delicately down the painted surface of the wooden screen.

"This is wonderful, Mrs Alderman, and I can assure you there's nothing wrong with it," she said. "This tree, here, it's called a Gingko Tree, and this screen is a Japanese piece. I'd guess it's from the late 1800s, maybe the 1880s, 1870s, around that time. This art style made a comeback around that time, the Rinpa School."

Velma turned away from the screen at a low hissing sound, and she tilted her head slightly, listening with care. It was too irregular to be the sound of gas escaping from something, or to be the noise of a draught. It was soft and venomous, heard at the very upper edge of her hearing, and she looked at Mrs Alderman in the mirror of her vanity instead of directly, so that the old woman wouldn't hide her flinch. As expected, when the hiss came again, Mrs Alderman jumped, shuddering, and huddled down in her coat, glancing around the room, but it was plain she couldn't see where it was coming from.

"Oh," Mrs Alderman said, wavering. "Well, that's— That's the last.... I can't think what else I might have brought back."

Velma looked about the room, examining it carefully. On the walls were some nice prints of a landscape painter she wasn't familiar with, in pale shades of grey, a series of paintings of some cliffside; the vanity looked rather modern, made in the '70s, but it was very well-loved, and it looked as though it was regularly painted and cared for; the wardrobe was a handsome thing of cherry wood, matched to the chest of drawers...

The bed evaded her gaze.

She noted it on her first pass of the room, the way her gaze was drawn away from the bed to something else immediately; on the second, she tried to concentrate on the cotton sheets, and almost could, but was soon dissuaded. Trying to look at the canopy, at one of the four posts, at the legs, achieved the same result: her gaze slid inexorably away.

"The bed new?" she asked. "The sheets, maybe?"

"No, no," Mrs Alderman said, shaking her head. She didn't turn her gaze on the bed, either: she kept looking at Velma instead, and Velma stepped slowly forward, toward it.

The movement of her hand was whip-fast, landing hard on the carved wood of the foot board, and Velma was immediately face-to-face with the black-scaled thing that rippled out of it, its teeth bared, its eyes smoking. She grabbed it around the throat, ignoring its desperate screech as hot, crackling steam came away from under its scales where her palm touched, and try as it did to scramble out of her grip, it couldn't, as she shoved it hard against the wood, forcing it to melt back into place.

It was reptilian, sort of – its legs were little, strangely jointed things that jutted out from the base of its belly, but its body was built the way a snake was, with no shoulders, no real difference between the main bulk of its body and its tail. The legs seemed to have been added on almost at the last minute, not really looking as though they should be able to support its weight, as small as they were, and as widely spaced apart.

She could clearly see the design marked on the ornate foot board of the bed: coiling, snakeish patterns and some characters in a language she didn't know – Thai, maybe, or perhaps an Indian language. It was definitely the Devanagari script, but it was neither Sanskrit nor Hindi, and even before her eyes, the characters shifted, hidden beneath the seemingly moving coils as others re-emerged from beneath them.

Her hands steamed as she drew them away, loosely opening and closing her fists, and she looked to Mrs Alderman, who was staring in horror at the bed, her mouth open.

"Did your bed always have these carvings?" Velma asked in a gentle voice, and Mrs Alderman shook her head.

"No!" she said, horrified. "No, no, they never... No, I didn't even see, how long—?"

"I expect," Velma said placatingly, shaking the steam off her hand before she gently laid her palm on the old lady's shoulder, "that when you broke those two statuettes you mentioned, that the spirit inside was free to secrete itself into something else – in this case, your foot board. It could probably frighten you best from here, because you were most vulnerable when you were sleeping. When you went toward the statuettes, it was always just as you woke, or just before you went to sleep, right?"

Mrs Alderman nodded, still not tearing her gaze away from the foot board.

"I'm gonna need to make sure I break all of this thing's connections to the house, but honestly, it feels like it's pretty contained to an object once it binds itself, and it looks like after that, it contains itself to a particular set of boundaries. In the house out near Skegness, it was all neat and tidy, right? I noticed the same thing with all the plant pots outside, the bench - but you don't garden, do you, Mrs Alderman? Its reach doesn't stretch to the lawn."

Mrs Alderman was still staring, and Velma gently took her by the arm, leading her out of the room and down the stairs.

"I'm going to take the foot board off the bed," she said softly, sitting her down and flicking the kettle back on. Mrs Alderman stared dumbly at her. "Now, I'm gonna have to use some of my tools for that, but I should be able to replace it with a replica in similar wood, or you can have it without the foot board in future. For now, just have a sit down here..."

"Thank you," the old lady whispered, and Velma patted her shoulder as she set more tea before her, picking up her briefcase and heading back up the stairs.

As she worked, she put her phone on loudspeaker.

"Hey, Aunt Ginchiyo," she said as she dragged a saw neatly down the very edge of the foot board, where the joints were affixed to the posts of the bed - she'd have to pry those out, of course, but she was grateful the bed was old enough that there wouldn't be any glue, just good, solid joinery. As the saw came further down, a few of the shifting coils carved in the wood hopped out of the way of the saw's blade, but didn't force their way into the air again, which was a good sign, as far as containment went. "I have some sort of... I don't know, I think some sort of fear demon. I have it contained in a piece of wood, so shall I bring it around to yours?"

"No," Ginchiyo said, slightly shortly. "You're in Nottingham, right now, aye?"

"Yeah, I'm out in Sherwood."

"See my wee man in Nottingham town centre. His name's Hamish MacKinnon, and his shop is MacKinnon's Antiques, I'll text you the address."

"Aren't you home?"

"No."

"But—"

"Come down once you've seen Hamish," Ginchiyo said, and the line went dead. Frowning, Velma turned to glance at her phone. It wasn't like Ginchiyo to be so standoffish, or so short with her, but there was nothing to be done about it, no point calling the woman back once she'd hung up.

She focused on sawing away the whole of the foot board, setting it aside and then working on prying out the pieces of joinery that had been holding it in place with her chisel, setting them into a cloth bag before sanding off the splintered edges. It was a shame to do it to such a nice old bed, but these things had to be done.

Hauling the board under one arm and holding her briefcase and the cloth bag in the other hand, she brought them out to the car, pushing down the back seats so that she'd have space to lay the thing down. She was glad she didn't have to borrow a trailer off her dad to haul anything out – that was so often the case when she had to shift a huge piece of furniture, and it was a bloody arse of a thing to get done.

Mrs Alderman seemed in much finer spirits when Velma went back into the house, and Velma gave her a smile.

"Look, I'm gonna go back over the house, because it's completely possible I've missed something," she said, "but honestly, things like these are usually pretty simple, pretty routine. I've cut out the foot board, and there's no evidence that the thing's seeped out into the rest of the bed. The actual corridors seem a lot lighter, the shadows less pervasive, the air smells fresher – all of that, to me, is evidence that the problem has been removed. Now, that’s not at all definite, so you give me a call if you think anything might be wrong, but this looks fine to me. Very simple job, Mrs Alderman."

"It's a— it's a demon, then?"

"Well, I didn't get a great look at it," Velma said. "See, the classification of "demon" is actually pretty wide-ranging, and it's not really my area of expertise, but from what I can gather, Mrs Alderman, its reach goes out from whatever object it binds itself to, and now that I’ve cut out the headboard, I’ll be able to take that away. That’s the important thing.

"What's also important to note, Mrs Alderman, is that you didn't do anything wrong, and you couldn't have possibly known what was happening – in fact, it was probably really good that you took this home instead of letting it be taken to a bigger family with young children, where it could have done more damage, so good on you for trusting your instincts. About your bed—"

"Oh, it's alright," Mrs Alderman said, shaking her head. "I hated that old bed. My husband, Albert, he picked it out. I was actually planning to get rid of at the beginning of the year, but then..." She trailed off.

"That would be the spirit's work, too," Velma said gently. "It's a little spell it does to protect itself – make sure that you don't focus on it for too long, or examine it, or think about getting rid of it. It probably wanted you to destroy the statuettes it came in because they were too easy to move, whereas a big bed like that is the real heart of a house, you know? Can I drive you anywhere, Mrs Alderman, or maybe call someone to come see you?"

The old woman looked embarrassed, fidgeting in her slippers. "Oh, no, no, this haunting business..."

"It was your niece that recommended you call me, wasn't it, the florist?" Velma asked, smiling sweetly. "Why don't I give her a call?"

Hesitating, Mrs Alderman bit her lip, but then she nodded her head, and Velma waited until the niece in question – a tall, burly woman who looked as though she might as easily arrange oak trees as she could flowers – arrived, and then she left them be. Mr MacKinnon's shop had no answer when she phoned the shop, so she just drove straight there.

Once upon a time...