Read Online House of Bones by Graham Masterton - Free Book Online Page B

in. The property’s empty and we’re the sole agents. There’s nothing illegal in making an inspection.”
    â€œWell, all right,” said John, uncertainly, looking up and down the street. There was nobody in sight except for an old woman toiling up the incline with a tartan shopping trolley.
    Liam went back to the car and returned with a black leather case. “Lock-picks,” he explained. “I took a locksmith’s course, once upon a time. I was going to follow my dad into the hardware business. I did some work for a couple of estate agents and then I realized that they were making ten times more money than I was.”
    He fiddled around with the door for a while, and then abruptly opened it. He pushed back all the papers and letters that were stacked up behind it and stepped inside. “Smells damp. It could do with an airing.”
    John waited on the doorstep. He didn’t like the house at all. It smelled not only of damp, but of decay: of dry rot and dust and something else, too – something deeply unpleasant, like blocked drains, or rotting seaweed, all tangled up with dead dogfish.
    â€œI don’t know, Liam,” he said, cautiously.
    â€œCome on, will you?” Liam encouraged him. “It was your idea, after all. And I agree with you. Ever since I first worked for Mr Vane I thought that he was up to something queer. Now we can find out what it is.”
    John hesitated a moment longer, and then hestepped inside. The house was in a desperate state of repair. The wallpaper was peeling off the walls like dead skin, and there were spots and smudges of mould on the ceiling. The house was unfurnished and uncarpeted, and as they walked along the narrow corridor to the kitchen at the back, their footsteps echoed flatly in every room.
    The kitchen overlooked a small, dark yard, overgrown with weeds. Liam opened the larder but there was nothing in it except an ancient packet of Scott’s Porridge Oats and a spattering of rat droppings. John turned the tap over the stainless steel sink but there was no water.
    â€œSo what are we looking for?” said Liam, as they went back through to the sitting-room. There were dusty rectangular marks on the walls where pictures had once hung. “Mr Vane is up to something or other with all of these properties, but what?”
    â€œI don’t know,” said John. “But 66 Mountjoy Avenue felt like this, too. You know – it had the same kind of horrible atmosphere.”
    â€œMost empty houses have a horrible atmosphere,” Liam told him. “It isn’t houses that make homes, it’s the people who live in them. Houses, on their own, are nothing at all. They’re dead.”
    They looked around the tiny dining-room. A single fork lay on the floor, as if somebody had dropped it years and years ago and never bothered to pick it up.
    They climbed the steep, uncarpeted stairs. “You’d never guess it, but this is a good sound property,” said Liam. “Some attention to the roof, and a lick of paint, and you could get a good price for this.”
    â€œI wouldn’t buy it if you paid me,” said John. He was beginning to wish that he had never come.
    They looked into the bathroom and all the bedrooms. Empty, their bare walls patterned with fingerprints and screw-holes and Sellotape marks. In one of the smallest rooms, a cut-out picture of a teddy bear still remained, stuck to the side of the fireplace.
    â€œWell,” said Liam. “That’s it. Nothing here at all, as far as I can see.”
    They were about to go back downstairs when John thought he heard a footstep in one of the bedrooms.
    â€œStop,” he said. “Did you hear that?”
    â€œDid I hear what?” asked Liam.
    They waited and listened, and then they heard another footstep, and another. There was no doubt about it. Somebody was walking across the bare boarded floor.
    â€œJohn, you wait here,”