Getting the hang of this now.

Isabella initiated the drink with Dean. She had thought it best to get on with her life mid toilet break on a Wednesday afternoon. These normative instructions were frequent. She had come to think of them like pimples, eventually one would be succulent enough to pop. She thinks she fancied Dean, she could convince herself in time, sure. Love was like a slow cooker, a hammy metaphor to tide her over.

The drink, as we’ve described, was a damp squib. Dean Jenkins wasn’t a genius; there was no savant lurking in the depths of his psyche. The aptitude tests that came as part of the application to Lumora were fine, if unspectacular. A lab technician assistant with requisite qualifications and a need to pay rent. He worked a simple, mundane nine-to-five. And he was horny. Oh, so horny. Maybe that’s slightly disingenuous. It wasn’t as if he was a bad person. It makes his death all the sadder. He had a good heart; he certainly didn’t harbour half as many worries and insecurities as our Isabella. So, after the comment to his colleague, he felt bad. He decided he wanted to help, and he thought he knew exactly how to do it.

The next day at lunch, Dean wandered over to Isabella’s desk, his white coat swishing in weird synchronisation with his gait. She felt her cheeks flush, because she knew a lab assistant would have no reason to come all the way up to the seventh. She started to rip a nail off her little finger and pushed her tongue around her mouth to make sure it was clear of sweetcorn from her sandwich. She needed tits and teeth for this.

‘I really enjoyed last night. Could I see you again?’

Isabella was bowled over. The cheeks kept flushing, her heart started to thrum. Her obsessive thoughts snaked out little hands, to fondle and jiggle the idea that Isabella might have hit it off romantically with someone. The chime of wedding bells started to rise, she thought about kid’s names and where to live; as to benefit from the best possible catchment area.

She got ahead of herself, because that’s what control is to someone like Isabella.

That evening Isabella took an Uber over to Dean’s house. A pleasant new build in an unremarkable part of town called Great Ashby. If houses came with screen protectors, like phones did, Dean’s would still be stuck to the double-glazing. She didn’t think she would sleep with him but wouldn’t rule it out. Her handbag still had the rape whistle of course, but now also boasted a prophylactic. She was a full spectrum girl. She rang the doorbell and then gave a little start as the garage door rolled open. After the clunking had finished, Dean poked his head out.

‘In here, got something to show you.’

Whistle ready to go, she gulped and ducked under.

She gave him top marks for how clean and tidy his garage was. The floor was immaculate, pristine white and almost pearlescent in its finish. Where a car should have been, instead were two plastic chairs and on the one closest to Isabella was a small black device, slightly smaller than your average phone, with one singular ruby red button.

We’ll give you the conversation here exactly as it happened, if you so wish. Best for you to form your own opinions.

‘Dean, I thought we were going to get a Chinese, why are we in your garage?’

‘We will. Sweet and sour king prawn balls, beef and black bean and a chow-mein, all on me. But I wanted to show you something.’

‘That, you mean?’

‘Yes. This is the button. I think it can help you.’

‘Dean, is this from the lab?’

‘Yep. It’s what I’ve been working on.’

‘What is it? Like a universal remote for my telly? I have two of them. They don’t work. I also read about the infrared radiation if you have too many remotes in your house, studies show—’

‘—It’s for that. Right there. I lied about last night; I wanted to enjoy it. But I couldn’t. You were just so… worried about everything. This can help.’

‘Oh.’

‘No, I mean I like you. I want to like you. I do. But you said it yourself, you’re unhappy and petrified of getting sick from what may or may not happen to you. That’s what the button’s for. It gets rid of all that.’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘How did they explain it—erm—yeah, like the recycle bin on your computer. You know where you ctrl A and ctrl delete a bunch of stuff.’

‘I drag.’

‘Not the point. But yes, imagine that, but for your brain. This button does that, for your mind.’

‘And I just press it?’

‘No, you take it out for dinner, of course you press it.’

‘But it’s red.’

‘Official button rouge, thank you.’

‘Red buttons are always bad.’

‘This one isn’t. No boom.’

‘Hmm, it looks funny. Is it one of those that needs a double press? Like does it get stuck down?’

‘One press, traditional style, classic technique.’

‘Is there a ping?’

‘A what now?’

‘You know, like an alert. It could subscribe me to a newsletter. I don’t want spam. Next thing I know I need to enter my card details and then I’m in a pump and dump crypto scheme and owe HMRC a packet.’

‘Calm down. It’s an isolated-mechanical-one-simple-push scenario. A tactile response for your fingertip and unless your nerve endings are shot—and don’t worry, I know what you’re like, they’re not—then you’ll know when it’s done.’

‘But then what happens?’

‘The instant the button is pushed your mind will be free. No more chatter, no more worry and all anxiety will be drained away.’

‘Where does it go?’

‘What?’

‘I’ve always wondered about losing weight or Wi-Fi. Like, is it in the air we breathe? Or are there just invisible words and calories floating through the sky. Fat sentences. Greasy little adjectives. Look, right above me now, grammar fried rice. Can it get stuck in my lungs, is that what hay fever is?’

‘Which one?’

‘Eh?’

‘Which one do you want me to laugh at first?’

‘That’s not fair. I’m worried.’

‘So, push the button.’

‘But that’s what I’m worried about.’

‘And when you push it, you won’t be. Ta-da.’

‘I don’t get it. My mind will be empty, yes, but what will I think?’

‘Whatever you want.’

‘I want to think about the button right now, to tell you the truth.’

‘Only dreams and aspirations after you push it. What do you want? What excites you?’

‘I wanted to go on holiday to Ibiza but then I found out there was two sides to the island. The party-night-club-drug-fucky-festy side and then the tapas-white-lineny-shirty-sangria part. I was overwhelmed.’

‘What did you do?’

‘Week at home. Crisps and Bridgerton.’

‘Blimey, so okay, you push that button and you’ll just book the holiday and see both parts of the island. Rent a car, probably.’

‘Sounds expensive. And is it a good time of year now?’

‘See.’

‘See what?’

‘All of that extra stuff. All the baggage like sand between your toes. Poof, gone with a single push.’

‘Forever?’

‘No, not quite. See, it’s like clearing your gutters out. All the crap and gunk will slowly build back-up.’

‘I live in a flat.’

‘Flats have gutters, don’t they?’

‘Don’t know. Now I’m worried I’ve neglected mine, cheers.’

‘Christ.’

‘Kidding, kind of. So, I’ll need to push the button again?’

‘In-time, eventually, sure.’

‘Not a one-simple-push scenario then, is it?’

‘You’re impossible.’

‘Charming, I put my nice tights on for you.’

‘I’m trying to do you a favour, I had to pull some strings to get it out of the lab.’

‘Dean, did you steal this?’

‘Borrowed it.’

‘Is it safe?’

‘Of course it’s safe. Look here on my phone, we have all this data from our tests, can you see that? A near zero percent likelihood.’

‘What’s that for?’

‘Potential, hypothetical complications.’

‘Such as?’

‘You won’t care when you push it.’

‘I care now, tell me.’

‘Fine. Infection, bleeding, nerve injury, DVT, PE, death, dural tear, CSF leak, bowel/bladder/sexual dysfunction, paralysis, oesophageal injury, pharyngeal injury, tracheal injury, injury to the nerves of the voice box resulting in a soft voice or a hoarse voice, dysphagia, non-union, persistent, or recurrent symptoms and further surgery.’

‘PE? Like at school? Physical Education?’

‘Pulmonary Embolism.’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Blood clot in a lung artery. Nasty way to go.’

‘No, I mean the button, sounds dangerous.’

‘Don’t press it then, forget it, we’ll just get Chinese and call it a night.’

‘Sorry, no, I’ll do it, I’ll do it. I’m just scared; I’m always scared. Every day when I wake up, I’m terrified by what I did the day before, what I have to do that day, and what’s coming up tomorrow. Fear wrapped in anxiety rattling through my brain. Little pigs in blankets of doubt, self-loathing and regret. I eat; I’m fat. I relax; I’m lazy. I work; I’m bored. Being in the moment is like having your fingernails removed by the claw of hammer. What comes next? How can I agonise over that, obsess over the tiny details until I’ve burnt any source of joy or relief in the present and shifted everything over, kicked the can down the road and then stepped in shit as I traipse my way, reluctantly, toward it. You don’t know what it’s like, to be removed from existence, a second out of sync—’

‘What happened? Are you okay?’

‘I pushed it. When I was ranting, I just pushed it.’

‘And?’

They started making out. Isabella dropped her handbag with a clunk, and they did it right there on the pristine floor. When they were finished, they ordered Chinese and watched a film. Isabella felt new but it was more than that. It was as if she could see the world for the first time. Experience it with all her senses. The frankly average takeaway blew her taste buds away. The Fast & Furious film made her laugh and cry in ways she couldn’t comprehend. And Dean was no porn star. Still, the sex was the best she had ever had.

With one press of a button Izzie had arrived for the first time and as the evening wound to a close she found herself with one singular thought in her mind.

‘I don’t ever want to go back to how I was.’

‘Isabella…’

A curt hand, the debut, ‘Call me Izzie.’

‘Izzie, I don’t know how long it will last. That was the first time anyone has ever pushed it.’

That Dean had lied to her didn’t upset her, wasn’t shocking. Before she would have been liable to lob a king prawn ball at him; smatter his white hoodie with sweet and sour sauce. But now she just laughed. Unburdened with needless considerations, free of worry, Izzie was left with just a clear vision on how to proceed.

‘I’ll need to take the button then, won’t I?’

‘Huh. Are you joking? I’ve stolen prototype medical science worth millions. To help you!’

‘To sleep with me. Let’s be real.’

‘Whatever. The point is, it’s my cock on the block if it’s not there tomorrow morning when they start work.’

‘When does it release?’

‘Release?’

‘The shops, when can I buy one.’

‘Christmas. A Christmas, I think. Maybe the next one, if we get it through human trials and approval.’

‘And how long will this last?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘But not till next Christmas?’

‘No, I don’t think so. I just don’t know.’

‘I’m keeping it then.’

‘I’ll lose my job at the very least, but you don’t under—.’

‘Not my problem.’

Dean was exasperated, offended even. He got up and stamped his feet, waved his arms and shouted. All needless huffing and puffing. He had the button safely locked in his garage. Izzie wasn’t in the mood for a fight, or a theft, life was good. And besides, she could play the long game. Here was a man that had thought with his dick. Now that was taking a nap, the cognitive function had clearly returned to his brain. His own button, in a way. Izzie chuckled to herself. She didn’t need to convince Dean now. She only needed to wait until his dick woke up.

After that second date, Izzie enjoyed a week of bliss.

She’d wake up fresh as a daisy. Before, as Isabella, she’d barely go ten minutes without worrying about something. Each morning a new batch of alarms would start to blare. Don’t be late for work. You haven’t been to the gym this week. Did you rinse the Tupperware?

For a time, she thought that Dean had got it wrong. The button was a one time, one push scenario. She would see him watching her in the staff canteen, somewhere between afraid and professionally curious. She even got fruity with it, leaving little post it’s on his lunch tray as she walked by. Fancy Ibiza? He kept his distance; it made Izzie laugh. As if he worried that she’d erupt like an unlucky blighter from Alien, the button bursting forth from her chest. She felt great.

Her skin improved, her weight levelled off, she laughed more, slept better and even started to crack jokes. Yakult’s went unopened in her fridge; she wasn’t as anal about the time she left for work in the morning and didn’t feel the pressure to stay on after home time. Weirdly though, some days she did. Because she felt like it. And that was the secret to feeling free and easy. There wasn’t a method to any of the madness. There wasn’t a method to freeness. It was taking things as they came. Living in the moment, yada, yada and all that jazz.

It lasted a week, as we said.

She had needed the toilet, sometime around three in the morning. Half-asleep and unwilling to turn the light on she had flopped onto the porcelain and started to go.

Don’t clip it short, that’s how you get a UTI. What if you had broken your little toe just then, stumbling around in the dark. Is the balcony door locked. What if you can’t get back to sleep. What if you sleepwalk. What if you go up and over and crash down below into the bin shed. Rubbish. Filth. That’s you.

‘Fuck.’ The word came like a bullet.

The thoughts came with a headache and cotton mouth. Like a hangover that pulled at your skin so tight a breeze would rip it open.

She couldn’t get back to sleep that night, tossing and turning as if she could shake the thoughts loose, the obsessive hateful images would sludge out onto her silk pillowcases, like rancid earwax. But they remained. By the time the sun broke above the gloomy cloud cover, they had grown. Isabella was back and she was back in a big, painful way.

She was the first to arrive at the lab that morning and waited in her car. Dean himself had been plucking up the courage to approach Isabella, sorry Izzie, to enquire about the possibility of registering interest for another date. She had been right; the dick was starting to take over again. We’re not completely comfortable with the sexual desires that course through the brain, so maybe we’re doing Dean a disservice, but when you had shown a pretty lady kindness, when you had gone further by expunging all that plagued her, why couldn’t you have a meal and another special cuddle?

‘Can we meet up again? Tonight?’ She blurted out to him in the middle of the carpark.

It being exactly what Dean wanted to hear, he didn’t listen properly or drink all of Isabella in that morning. She was drawn, a bit rough. Her palms cupped her elbows so tightly that her knuckles began to whiten. He missed that. He also didn’t pick up on the desperation in first, her tone and second, her eyes.

‘Of course. There’s the new film—’

‘No, my place. But Dean—’

‘—Yes?’

‘I need it again.’

Dean wasn’t too far up his own arse that he thought she meant him. But Isabella caught the disappointment in his eyes, saw those same eyes take her in. Now he saw it, now he understood. If he didn’t know better, she might have been a drug addict. People had been talking. But either way, this woman was in pain. It’s the reason why he agreed to smuggle the button out down his pants again. It was the only place they didn’t wave the security wand over. And that’s where it stayed all the way to the penthouse’s front door.

‘Where is it?’ No hello, no kiss on the cheek. Isabella was crawling the walls by seven o’clock that evening.

Dean didn’t answer with words. He simply nodded his head forward, gestured to the package in his package.

Misunderstanding him she replied, ‘I’ll do whatever you want, if you just tell me where it is.’

Safe inside with the door shut, he clarified.

‘Get it out. Give it to me now.’

He studied her; she was a harrowing sight. Her tongue kept licking at her lips, but it was her eyes that panicked Dean. At first, he thought it a trick of the light. But no, they had sunk deep into their sockets, darkened by webs of crimson, veins pulsing like worms beneath the surface.

‘Are you okay?’ The best he could manage.

‘No, I’m not fucking okay. I don’t know what you’ve done to me, but I want to kill myself, not because I’m depressed. Depression would be a walk in the park compared to this. No, to shut the fucking thoughts up. They hurt. Why do they hurt, Dean?’

Without saying a word and never taking his eyes off her flickering flesh, Dean shoved his hands down his pants and produced the button. It was warm. It was damp. He flicked a pube from it before placing it in her clammy palm.

She pressed it.

A moan slipped out of her, not sexual, but medicinal, like soothing a burn. She stepped back, then again, like a headrush from a cigarette, until the shoe cabinet ushered her down. Slumping until her chin rested on her chest, she went still. Hand’s splayed and leg’s parted like the red sea, she didn’t look up, didn’t speak. Dean wasn’t sure she was breathing. Her head sagged and the button lay next to her. It was only when he made a move toward it, did she spark into life. Her quiet, imperceptible breaths became big hulking gasps of air.

‘Do not touch it.’ She snatched it up and pushed the button another three times.

When she was finished, she had a smile as wide as a rainbow and the rings around her eyes started to fade, the worms burrowing deep. Her mouth felt sugary and happy. Now her eyeballs had a wet glassy sheen to them like someone had forgotten to rinse the suds off.

Izzie was back. Isabella had been banished. But John, he was coming.

PART THREE coming next time. BIG OLD JOHN!

We’ll give it to you straight.

Can’t stand the evil, lying, fake pretend bitch. And that’s being nice.

Oo la la. Isabella is doing great, isn’t she? She’s rebranded. See her curt little hand fly out, ‘It’s Izzie, actually.’

New and improved but it’s lipstick on a pig. People ask if it was that simple. The name, they mean. A breath of fresh air in a stuffy life. She’ll laugh, flutter those big lashes.

‘Oh, you know, this and that. Everyone’s a work in progress, aren’t they?’

If it were a set of new, impressive, plastic breasts, perhaps people wouldn’t care as much. But it’s that je ne sais quoi that bugs them. Physically she’s still the old Isabella, but to be in her company is to experience a different person.

Izzie, yeah.

Dean, who worked in the lab, went on a date with Isabella. He remarked, mid experiment the next day, rubber gloves up to his elbows, ammonia in his nostrils, that the girl was like a coiled spring. So much as breath in her direction and she’d be liable to take an eye out. Jumpy, uncomfortable and the only topic of conversation to put her at ease was the different maladies she may or may not have. The GPs had her on a special list, you know. For those that sit down and start yapping, self-diagnosis twats. Dean left, having picked up the bill, bemoaning NHS wait times. What a first date.

For now, he had gotten off lightly.

If you got Isabella going, she’d not stop about all the trauma in her life. Her dad leaving when she was five, her mum shacking up with Clive who may or may not have abused her; she’d play that one the right side of vague. But now, she doesn’t talk about the past at all. Isabella is dead, long live Izzie and where are we going for lunch, by the way? Somewhere fabulous and delicious, that’s the right answer for our Izzie. She’s a five-star review of a good time nowadays. We get little snippets every so often, a glimpse into her life. She’s wrong. She doesn’t know what she’s done, but we do.

She travels lighter, did we mention that. Before, her handbags had become glorified Bergens. A girl on manoeuvres. Large, lumbering and full of everything she might ever need. She used to be able to list off the inventory like days of the week, if only, far more than seven.

‘New pair of undies because you never know,’ she’d say, not stopping for breath, before roleplaying a pharmacist. ‘Tabs for travel sickness, indigestion, constipation and its runnier opposite. Then ibuprofen, paracetamol and a tub of daytime valerian root extract. I don’t often carry the nighttime version, I’m not crazy!’

No, Isabella, it’s totally normal to carry around a rape whistle, Chinese mace courtesy of a VPN rooted trip to Amazon, a small truncheon and those little capsules that contain an emergency twenty-pound note. Exhausting but not exhaustive either, it was the shortened version. We used to hear it all, help her with it, even.

But now she’s content with a small clutch, some spangly gold nonsense. She can’t leave it alone. Her dates, nightly and numerous now, notice immediately. If they bring it up, she’s light and breezy. ‘A woman’s mind is as complex as the contents of her handbag, no?’ Some sad saps thought that meant drugs. Sadder ones thought that was cool. They’d be into it. Her algorithm delighted in providing fodder that dug that sort of thing. And no doubt Izzie was the thing.

It’s funny, because as Isabella, she would have been hung up about that. Why was he asking about my handbag. Was I touching it too much. Did it match my outfit. A few times it almost happened. Her insecurities would start to flare. Isabella would gain a foothold. But Izzie would slip a hand into her clutch and all would be okay again.

We’ll join her tonight, in a moment, on the way back from a date that thought he might get his end away. Two for one cocktails at family chain Chiquito’s on a Tuesday evening. Dream on, partner. Izzie just likes to savour the chase. That energy desperate men give off when they think the world revolves around them. As they’re purring over their tats, or waxing lyrical about their big bulging bonus packet, Izzie will sniff it; a better scent than tex-mex fajitas any night of the week.

Perhaps if she had stayed, gone back to his and got it on, then this might have turned out differently. Maybe she would have avoided John—but we’re skipping ahead.

Izzie lives in Stevenage but is planning to move away, somewhere sunnier, with more glitz. When she was Isabella, Stevenage suited her fine. She’s close to two major motorways, the A1 and M1. There’s a direct service into central London, all the way to Brighton in fact and going the other way she could be in Doncaster within two hours. Not that she’d travel by train if she could help it. God forbid. Touching the poles and seats would bring on a bout of anti-bacterial gel scrubbing so intense it would leave her skin flushed and sore.

But for work, it worked. She could totter out of her penthouse flat, take the lift down to the car park in the Monument Court complex, just north of the Old Town, and be at work in ten minutes. She knew exactly when to leave, 8.13, to beat the rush hour jam. By 8.25 she’d be sitting down to open her overnight oats at her desk on the seventh floor of Lumora Labs, before her boss, Terry, sauntered in at 8.37, sometimes 8.39. She knows because she recorded it in a spreadsheet.

Isabella wasn’t particularly enamoured with her OCD.

People spoke of specific variants, like ice cream flavours. There’s the classic, the vanilla, the checking. Touching and flicking light switches. Wrenching the tap every which way and twice on Sunday. Wardrobes that resembled a polyester Pantone chart. Tick, got. She was somehow both a hoarder and a neat freak too. Do not go in that cupboard as you come into her flat, the one with the boiler. You would be crushed by a tonne of crap that straddled the line, neither keep nor chuck. Look deep enough and you’d find half a foosball table.

Those are pedestrian flavours. But what about the maple pecans or the rum raisins of this world. She paid extra for the penthouse flat but obviously she wouldn’t dream of stepping out onto the balcony. No, of course not. That will be because of the intrusive thoughts. The premium shit. Jump, Isabella, fling yourself over and if you do, try and land on your head because there’s a low percentage chance you survive on your back. The balcony door stays firmly locked, even in the sweltering summer heat. The cladding doesn’t work; the insulation’s knackered and doesn’t meet regulations.

For Isabella it was almost as if her mind took a scoop of all fifty-one flavours and blended it. Here, drink this OCD milkshake. Brain freeze, the result. But like anyone that’s ever had brain freeze, you shake it off and keep sucking that straw. Isabella made peace with it. This was her lot in life and she would muddle through.

Once she found a partner, had a kid, settled down and moved out she’d be okay. And there it went again. Why haven’t you found someone. Why aren’t you pregnant yet. Did you know the ideal window to have a child is 28 to 32, you’re 33, Isabella. And can you really sell the penthouse. In this economy. Have you got the EWS1 form. The Grenfell disaster was bad, sure, but what about the mortgage values of the flat. How much to replace all the cladding. You’re a bad person, you ought to donate. Fuck you, Isabella.

So, no, not particularly enamoured.

But Izzie is light and airy. As long as she has her clutch with her. Because the gaps are getting smaller. The windows of bliss, shorter. Now the milkshake is warm, it’s foul and fetid. Oh God, they’ve put banana in it, both Isabella and Izzie hate banana. Get this milkshake out of my sight, I cannot handle it.

‘Have you seen my clutch?’

She repeats it, panicking, another three times before the driver has even got a syllable out.

‘I don’t know. I picked you up. You got it in. Do you need me to go back to the bar?’

Izzie’s hands fly beneath the seat. They come back up covered in crumbs and hair. She wants to gag. Where is her anti-bac gel? In her old handbag, the fucking holdall. The one she doesn’t need anymore.

Isabella is starting to rear her ugly head.

The buckle of the clutch glints at her but it’s not relief that she feels. It’s been too long and they’re building now. Worse than ever. The button has fallen out; the thoughts tell her. You’ve left it at the bar. It’s been crunched under a tyre of some boy racer on the way home. You’re finished and we’ll see you up and onto that balcony tonight. Oh yes, we will.

A deep breath holds them at bay, for now. The button is there, she can feel it bulge in the clutch. She snatches it up, forces her hand in and presses it down.

Release.

She cannot be that careless again. She affects a playful smack on her forehead. ‘Izzie, what am I like,’ before sliding her hand in again, removing the prize and stowing it securely in her bra.

‘You okay, want me to stop?’ The taxi driver is all wide eyebrows in the rear view. ‘Expensive, your bag, I take it?’

The clutch is worth ten pounds, if that. Her phone a little over a thousand. She lets her shoulders relax and slumps back into the seat. Her lacy left B cup now holds the priceless object.

‘Thanks for being so understanding, darling.’ And she’s out the Uber with a wink and a grip of the old man’s shoulders. She even gives him a little squeeze, he’s made up. She can tell.

And that brings us to the present. We’re close.

If the button wasn’t in the clutch, then the agony would have continued to build and it would have started to manifest itself in physical pain. First her neck would tighten, like a braid of hair caught in a power drill. Then her ears would start to feel full and wet. Imagine hot porridge poured from a rusty ladle. All that tension would culminate in her jaw tightening. The temporomandibular joint for those into anatomy. To Isabella it would have been a cue to stop, open her handbag and pull out painkillers. She was known to crunch them, chew them between her veneers. Bitter paracetamol first, then chalky ibuprofen second, washed down with a bottle of overpriced electrolyte bullshit.

And now as Izzie, that stuff is just not important. What a shame. Because if she would have stopped to do it, she might have seen the pair of eyes staring at her from the bin shed. John found it easy to slip inside and wait. Oh, he was in agony himself. Constantly shifting the weight between two feet as if he needed the toilet. But his bladder was empty. It was his head that needed evacuation. She doesn’t see John slide out from the swinging gate of the bin shed, doesn’t see him slip his hand into his overall, and doesn’t see the slightly damp cloth until she’s smothered by it. She doesn’t see anything at all until she’s safely upstairs, in her penthouse.

‘Where is it?’ John demands the second her eyelids flutter open.

She could really do with that painkiller now, she thinks.

No, scratch that. She could really do with slipping a hand inside her bra.

So could John.

John bends, picking up the empty clutch. His eyes bulge as he waves it at her. He smells of grease and sweat. Then comes a desperate bark. ‘Where is it?’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ Of course, she knows exactly.

‘Turn out your pockets.’ He says it deadpan, flat.

‘Pockets? Clearly not up on women’s fashion.’

John gives her the once over. She winks; he sighs.

‘Fucking airhead.’

‘What, don’t you like my dress?’

He doesn’t fucking care. It won’t be long until he thinks to conduct a strip search and shove a hand into her underwear. Perfect. Nothing like desperation to break the ice. But he’s in a blind rage. He’s only brought Izzie about three steps into her penthouse. Believe it or not, unconscious humans, even petite, weight jabbed women, are an absolute chore to bundle in and out of lifts and through fire doors. She’s on a little kitchen stool, bound and droopy. To her right is the cupboard that should never be opened. The cupboard full of hoarded crap and regrets that didn’t make the clean freak cut. John thinks it’s a fine place to start the search though and almost knocks her on her arse getting to it.

‘No! Don’t!’ Izzie’s cool exterior shatters with a scream. She needs her button, it’s starting again. Everything is starting to build.

And with good reason too. Because fuck the foosball table, as John pulls the handle, out flops Dean, you know, the guy from work. Dead as a dodo.

John is stilled. His turn with the wide eyes now. He looks at the woman he’s grown to hate over the past month, the woman who’s ruined his life, with his mouth slack and tongue fighting to find the words.

When he does, they’re the obvious. ‘Isabella, did you murder Dean?’

She looks down at her shoes. They’re pretty, they match the pocketless dress.

‘You know him? And I prefer Izzie now. Who the fuck are you, mate?’

Right, best we start at the beginning.

PART ONE coming next time. Yeah, weird right?

‘Explanation is the tide by which horror recedes.’

One of Charlie’s takeaways from a video essay about a derelict office building in Bristol. It was not haunted, just squatted by junkies and vagrants. But in this case his punchy maxim feels apt.

There’s not much of an explanation to be had, in truth.

Oh, the dog was a ten year old Shih Tzu.

‘A bitch called Sun,’ her owner, Mark, had joked. ‘Know your enemy and know yourself, and be certain that a dog will piss and shit wherever it pleases, especially your tennis shoes.’

Mark took Sun for a walk every morning around the same time. He lived a few doors down from the space. Charlie saw him on the Sunday, mistook Sun for a Pekingese. Then Mark saw the Range Rover the next day. He would not have given it a second glance, he said; he was not much into cars, if it were not for the sound coming from it.

‘Being burnt alive.’ No joke this time. ‘Like a furnace had found a way to get between your fingernails. Crawl right up your spine. Incinerate you from the inside out and everywhere in between.’

He had stopped, pulled Sun’s leash tighter, and tried to help. First, cupping a hand over the steamed glass and trying to see what was happening. The scream was somewhere between pain and pleasure, but he couldn’t see anything. The door would not open, but it burnt his hand. He remembers that, lotion needed for days.

And this is where it differs. Why none of this makes sense.

He turned to affix Sun’s lead to a lamppost or fence picket. He intended to smash the window in with a loose brick from a nearby front garden, but needed two hands to do it. He could not be exact, but he doubted his back was turned for more than a minute. He never heard the car door open; he never saw Charlie. The pavement is narrow; he would have heard thumping based on how quick Charlie ran on the VOD. After, Mark was shown a series of pictures—candid mugshots of blokes grabbed from social media. Mark could not identify Charlie, not fully, not reliably. He had no reason to lie. He swears blind that when Sun was secure, he returned to the Range Rover and it was empty. Except for the phone.

Police were called, people gathered, but in the end most saw it as a stupid stunt and simply moved on. A week later, no one could even remember.

We checked. Danny didn’t want to talk at all. Too busy, he said. Not enough hours in the day. Sam, before he stopped talking about his brother, bemoaned that someone had changed the password to the channel.

New videos keep appearing, though, once a month, nonsensically named and unintelligible. People say they hear speech or see flashes of something, but people say a lot of things these days.

Formless content from a dead channel. It’s weird, different, and it attracts an audience—for now. One that theorises between hits of dopamine, before something shinier pops up on their feed.

People really will watch anything these days.

Maybe Charlie knew that.

Maybe that’s his hustle now.

Thank you for reading the first liminal tale. Stevenage is not what it seems. See you in two weeks for the start of The Button.

The little boy stepped into the road, came from nowhere.

Book bag in hand, untucked shirt trailing below his blazer, he stumbled, struck with fear.

Deerest boy in headlights, Charlie chuckled.

The child was careless, following a ball or a fucking fidget spinner like a fool. No matter. No harm done. The Range Rover had been going the speed limit. Five-star Euro NCAP safety rating. Charlie smashed one of his oversized trainers into the gorgeous brake pedal and came to a stop. Textbook emergency stop. Not a whiff of an airbag.

The car never left the parking space on Walkern Road.

Oh, Charlie slammed the brake. He screamed. Bemoaned a small little prick and waved something away with all the venom he could muster. But the camera saw none of it and the car did not move.

On the VOD, Charlie spoke cruelly: ‘How many points for hitting him?’

His foot hurt. Through the trainer, it hurt. He had smashed it down so hard it smarted now. The pulse of pain roused him and, for a moment, there seemed to be some kernel of truth about the predicament he found himself in.

‘He wasn’t there, was he?’ Crystal clear on the VOD. ‘Pull yourself together.’

And just like that he was gone again.

The rear-view mirror commanded his attention. He turned it slowly. Left and right. Up and down. His eyes locked onto the glass and his heart began to thrum like a wire. Someone sat in the back seat. Relaxed. Chatting to him.

Charlie spun his neck so fast he felt the muscle pull. No one was there.

In the mirror, they were. A gentleman. Kind face. Dulcet tones. Familiar smile.

‘Where to, mate?’ Charlie asked.

The VOD is a one-sided conversation.

Charlie slipped into clipped small talk, like the soundboard of a terrible salesman. Like Barry.

‘That it is, that it is, my friend. Oh yeah? No rest for the wicked, you know what I mean? I met your brother, yeah, yep. Nice gaffe, the pub needs a bit of TLC, though. I’ll be in to see him shortly, after I finish with you.’

Charlie. Stop.

He was panting. The mirror was empty. He needed to give the car back. Take it to Barry. Leave Stevenage. But how to call him? It was only polite. Charlie opened the glove box, looking for business details, a sticker from Pound Lane. Instead, he found a birthday card. Hastily written in smudged ink, the envelope not stuck down properly. It was for a six-year-old, a boy named Ben.

Sorry, I missed it. Mummy is mad at me. Will make it up to you.

Love Daddy.

There were other things. An empty baggie with a marijuana leaf on it. A receipt for ready meals and cashew nuts. A wedding ring. Each widened Charlie’s eyes. They were terrified eyes, full of sadness and pain. He was crying but he did not seem to know.

Barry is incompetent. I’ll be asking for a discount.

He fiddled with the radio again, shut his eyes and hoped he could cling to something. The music was gone, so it automatically scanned for a new frequency. Static at first but then a whistle came through, and Charlie peeled his left eye open and then fully blinked as a sentence, audible and clear, echoed through the surround-sound speaker set-up of the brilliant car.

‘Your dick doesn’t work, Charlie. Why would I go down the aisle with you, if you can’t get it up?’

Claire was on the radio. He was suddenly boiling hot again, the sweat pooling in the small of his back and behind his knees. It came louder this time, the voice hissing, laced with more static. He felt a lump in his throat that only seemed to get larger with each swallow. His fingers went into his ears so quickly he scraped the skin of his canal on the way in. He was hot and delirious, still dehydrated from the food yesterday and after a poor night’s sleep in a shit bed. Yes, that was it. All logical.

‘I’ll start a podcast.’ Charlie tried to latch onto something tangible, with structure. He chose his career. ‘Interview the owners of these attractions that I review. Consult with them live and give them feedback and pointers on how to be the best spooks they can be.’

Charlie thought he said all that, thought he spoke for a good number of minutes on the subject of book deals and sponsorships. Instead, it was simpler, more harrowing.

‘If they don’t listen I’ll die, then.’ A short, sharp laugh. Not one that had been heard by any of Charlie’s regular viewers before.

His head hurt. The noise from the radio wouldn’t stop. It made the car shake now and anything he touched, the steering wheel, the armrest and even the little handles above the seat, everything was vibrating. No, it was laughing at him.

He had to get out. Politely and respectfully: fuck the Royal Oak, fuck ghosts and fuck this fucking car parking space. He unclipped his seatbelt and went to…it wouldn’t unclip. The button did nothing, wouldn’t budge. The door handle was locked solid too.

The button emblazoned with START did no such thing. He mashed the clutch, the brake, yanked the handbrake up and then forced it down with all his might. Nothing happened. His finger started to hurt from repeated jabs of the start button, the unlock button and now even the window button.

‘Power Windoeewwsss,’ Charlie screamed.

He thrashed in his seat, the seatbelt digging into his neck with every movement and his hand thumping from every smash against the interior until his bloodying hands came to rest on the steering wheel.

He was still shivering, on the VOD that is, as the steering wheel slick with blood twisted and turned but to no avail. He looked at his hands, they stung and they burned. No, beyond that, they were melting into the cream leather of the wheel. He could not remove them, for they had begun to merge. Skin became leather and leather became skin, and with it came a smell of burning cow, burning human flesh, it made him hungry.

He was the all-you-can-eat buffet and the parking space was famished.

The radio kept tuning itself, searching for a voice in the dark. Unhappy with each station, as if it were playing a repeat, it was merciless in its discretion.

First there was a man’s voice, old, gruff and tired.

‘Help me.’

Then a woman; she was terrified, her words barely fighting back the tears.

‘Get me out, please.’

And finally, the little boy. He said the least, but in a way, Charlie heard this most. He knew it to be Ben.

‘Get out. Get out now.’

The steering wheel was now joined by the heated seat; it started to clasp itself to Charlie’s legs. He felt his thighs blister as the hair was waxed off with cream leather. The cobalt trim would sew his mouth shut and his eyes would linger in that rear-view mirror for evermore.

He tried again, screaming in agony, peeling his fleshy hand from the steering wheel. Making for the door handle with what remained of his right hand. Moving it only served to waft the smell of his own demise at him, it was pungent and flabby.

With an almighty yank at the handle it gave, the interior lights came on. The door pinged with a plush sound as it pushed open.

Charlie almost garrotted himself in his rush to get out. He thumped at the release for the seatbelt. He flung himself to the pavement and then scarpered up and away, his laboured paces growing quieter as he never looked back.

Charlie Arnold never came back.

Regular viewers of Charlie Arnold’s channel would pick up on it straight away.

His manner into the camera was oddly confrontational from the get go. Some, upon seeing it, say it was his subconscious fighting, urging him to get out of there.

‘I didn’t even want to come here, you know? I had picked out some haunted little church tower thirty minutes away. Sam found this place. If you don’t like it, blame him. Don’t edit that out either.’

That opening remark, part of a three minute rant building in sardonic tone and frustration, was peculiar to put it mildly. Charlie waxed lyrical about how he could have slept under the stars at the old church tower in Thundridge, the Cold Christmas Church. It had credentials. It was legitimate. No doubt he would have captured ghostly armies marching in formation or creepy figures lingering amongst the gravestones.

His irritation abated quickly and it is this see-saw quality in Charlie that renders the VODs such a distressing watch.

It was the armrest first. Sensational, according to Charlie. Like a switch had been flicked, his arms unfurled and he began to grope and fondle the cream leather either side of the seat. It made him think of an executive stress reliever.

‘I can’t get over the finish. The material is out of this world. The quality. The attention to detail. Can you see this?’

He picked up the camera and, with a jerk that would make most people nauseous, rammed it towards the armrest and then on to the wood panelling of the console and dashboard, zooming in on the cobalt trim flecked throughout.

‘I’ve been travelling the country like a carrier bag caught in a breeze. Turning up to these places desperate for promotion. Their hearts must sink. The Fabia. The measly ten viewers. Look at me now.’

Once the phone was stowed back in its mount, Charlie kept his eyes closed for a moment. His tongue moved across his lips back and forth like a wiper blade. He grunted, even moaned, then snapped back and continued.

‘The height. Can you see the headroom I’m afforded in here? My old car? Forget about it. Squashed in a tin can.’

His hand flew above his head, gesticulating to demonstrate the space he perceived as grand. The upholstery felt like silk against his skin despite him being fully clothed. He pushed back hard into the seat. A loud thwomp was picked up by the camera. Then he rubbed the base of his neck and scalp like a grizzly itching itself on a spruce. Charlie was lost for a few moments in the ecstasy of it all, until a horn somewhere down the road jolted him.

He was lucid.

‘I’ll pop in and see Danny in a tick. Now we’ve disproved the idea that this parking space is special. I can give him the headlines on what he needs to change. Tell him my rates for continued consultation.’

But it was fleeting.

He turned the radio on. Static hissed, clearly audible on the VOD, but Charlie either wilfully ignored it or heard something else entirely. What he began singing along to was This Charming Man by The Smiths. It was as if he did not quite know the words. They slurred as he muddled through, mumbling and muttering. There was one line he did know and, as it came round, he found his confidence.

‘…pamper life’s complexity. When the leather runs smooth on the passenger seat…’

Flat and tuneless. Unnerving, though not for Charlie, who swatted joyfully at the passenger seat in time with his voice. He was triumphant and, in that moment, genuinely happy. He was this charming man. Claire would agree. Viewers would too. They would flock to his success and it was all down to the car he had purchased. The music seemed to give him buoyancy, a symphony for a victorious emperor.

Whilst many would argue something had been wrong for some time, the first moment Charlie appeared uncomfortable was when he declared the car ‘too hot’. He blamed Barry for supercharging the heated seats as he fidgeted, flexing his bottom as if trying to lift it from a fire flickering beneath him. He hunched, pulling his back away.

The Fabia had no such mod-cons.

‘Feel like I’m pissing myself,’ Charlie said. Sweat gathered and his thighs stuck to his jeans. It reminded him of nights entangled with Claire. That scent of intimacy. The idea that two humans could sleep comfortably stuck together like wiry spaghetti was laughable. He had hated it. He would wait until she was lightly snoring before wrenching her arms and legs off him, retreating to the cooler side of the bed. He had not overheated once since she had left, since they had ended, and that was the way he liked it.

He jabbed at the controls like a drunk wasp.

‘That’s better. Off. They do the bloody job, I tell you. Worth every penny.’

The heated seats were instead turned on, the three notches visibly lit. The fans began to blow hard. It took a moment for the camera to adjust to the new noise. Charlie turned everything on, sat back and promptly began to shiver. Condensation ran down the insides of the windows and he trailed a finger through the steam. He drew a heart, then his initials and Claire’s, giggling like a child doing something mischievous.

‘No.’ He wiped it away with the butt of his hand. Charlie turned back to the phone, stared directly into it and said, ‘I need to be alone for the viewers. That is money.’

What the VOD picks up is horrific.

‘I’ll die, then.’

It was spoken as if realising a great truth, accompanied by a shrug of his shoulders that did not stop. It became a spasm. His teeth began to chatter. The cold felt like a reminder, a call that he must do more, must praise the car further.

Something caught his eye, calmed him. Charlie bent forward, wanting to inspect the gearstick and pedals. He knew they were of the utmost quality but a true journalist must research. He pulled himself toward the steering wheel and down, the seatbelt tightening against his exposed neck and turning it red, turning it pink. He bowed his head, trying to see better. His feet were in the way.

‘The pedals are.’ He abandoned the sentence. ‘The hazards are on.’

They were not, but Charlie was convinced they were. He pressed the button. The small triangle lit up and went dark again. He repeated it five or six times, unsure whether they were ever truly on or off.

‘I can hear them. Can you hear them?’

Interaction with the audience brought him back. He picked up the phone with purpose. The viewers were exploding, from ten to a hundred and still climbing. He smiled. Comments told him he was doing a great job, that he was off his nut and everything in between.

‘But can you hear the hazards, guys?’

He imitated the clunking noise, which was otherwise inaudible.

The chat hung and errored, so Charlie tutted and put the phone back. They did answer. They all said they could not hear anything. He did not see it.

A tapping on the passenger window startled him. A woman stood outside, drumming against the steamed glass. Obscured at first so that Charlie was not sure she was even there. When the tapping did not stop and the figure became clearer, muscle memory made him lean across to roll the window down, but he caught himself.

‘Power windows,’ he shouted. ‘I’ve got power windows now.’

She replied but it sounded like gurgling water. Charlie took his time. He whirled his finger above the array of buttons on the armrest as if choosing a chocolate from a box.

‘Eeny-meeny-miny-power-windoew.’ The slur of the last word amused him.

A smooth electrical buzz lowered the glass.

‘You shouldn’t park here, mate. Move.’

Her tone was as friendly as a stranger telling you off can be, though edged with panic. Charlie heard only threat. A bullish interruption. He decided to show his horns.

‘Piss off. I’ll park wherever I damn please.’

‘I’m trying to help you, I’m trying to sto—’

‘If you want to help me, then like and subscribe, otherwise fuck off.’

He told his chat that sometimes people needed putting in their place and, as he raised the window, he waved her away. She stepped back and seemed to melt into the street. He found that curious, then laughed into a shiver.

Still too hot.

Perhaps it would have ended differently if Charlie had heeded her warning. But then again, when you watch the VOD, maybe he was already too far gone.

It only got worse from there.

Happiness, as it turned out, was a new car.

The cars we drive say a lot about us, Charlie thought. He had turned up at the Royal Oak and Danny had been distracted by how spectacularly crappy his Fabia had been. It explained why he had been so aloof, so uneven in Charlie’s company. Forcing him to drive him to the parking space when they simply could have walked. The pause, the hesitation, as he let Charlie sweep away the fishy crisp crumbs from the passenger seat.

A successful content creator, no, an experiential consultant, would not turn up in a car that looked like it was about to give up the ghost. Claire had been right. He needed to get his shit together. He had intended to wait until he was back home to go shopping but then, parked between a battered Beemer and knackered Peugeot, opportunity had knocked.

It was why Charlie had indicated off the roundabout and swung his Fabia into Pound Lane Used Cars on his way to the Royal Oak that morning. It had been the number plate, unmistakable from any distance, that had caught his eye. Then he had felt the first thrill of a rush whirr through him, like a stiff double shot of espresso straight to the eyeball. The video would be huge. Viral. Charlie Arnold would arrive, first in the cobalt blue Range Rover and second as the pre-eminent name in gotcha content.

Barry, the car salesman, leaned forward so his pudgy tummy ate his pinstripe shirt. The office smelled of cheap coffee and vanilla polish, trying and failing to mask damp carpet.

‘Test drive shouldn’t be a problem, no.’

‘Perfect. When did it come in?’ Charlie asked.

Barry was fidgeting and fondling paperwork. His constant salesman’s grin belied a man who couldn’t believe his luck at nine thirty on a Monday morning.

‘Yesterday. In good nick too. We can swap the plate if you want,’ Barry said.

No, it had to stay. Charlie waved a hand.

‘I can recommend some decent dual carriageways if you like, just up Six Hills.’

‘I was thinking around the Old Town, actually. Got a meeting. Walkern Road.’

‘Careful around there,’ Barry said, eyes down in his papers.

Charlie’s interest sharpened and he leaned forward.

‘Oh yeah?’

‘Parking on that road is a nightmare. Tight as arseholes. It’s still our car until you sign the agreement. Don’t want to ding it.’

Charlie laughed. Was Barry in on it?

His mind kept going and by the time Barry had fished the keys from the lockbox on the wall he was relaxed, certain about what had happened. Danny had let the air out of the tyres, enjoyed every hiss as they deflated. With an air compressor nearby, refilling them would have been easy. A decent car wash would take care of the dirt and muck, scrub the residue from the windscreen where the PCNs had been stuck.

As for the scratches.

Charlie never actually touched the car. His Fabia windscreen had been steamy. Perhaps if it had not been, perhaps if he had got closer, he would have seen they were nothing more than decals, fancy stickers stuck on and then peeled off.

Voilà. Just like that, the car was back in great nick.

‘What can you tell me about previous owners?’ Charlie asked.

Barry’s eyes returned to him. An actual question that might require effort. He cricked his neck, steepled his hands together in front of his tummy and tried to summon assurance.

‘Never privately owned, I believe. Registered to a company, then leased, then us.’ His voice lifted slightly at the end.

Well, there it was. Danny, like an administrator, managing his fleet of company cars. Pub cars. The ghostly fleet of Stevenage.

Barry gave a polite cough, the calling card of many a salesman when matters must turn financial. The deposit would clear out Charlie’s bank account. That was fine. It would create pressure and friction, and those were the forces a man needed to become successful. The monthly payments would provide structure and milestones to adhere to. But Charlie would drive from pub to church, from ghost to poltergeist, in a symbol of the story that had got under his skin and almost won.

He closed his eyes now and imagined. Charlie was going to savour every moment as he rocked up to the Royal Oak and saw the look on Danny’s face as the Range Rover saddled up next to the fading tarp.

They moved outside and Charlie slid into his prize.

‘Any problems, just bring it straight back. I’ll have all your paperwork ready to go.’ Barry slapped the car’s roof like it was a stallion.

Charlie’s stallion.

Charlie let his hand glide over Barry’s for the shake. He was the customer. He was about to drop a bomb. It was how it should be. Dominant. He waited until Barry had tottered back to the sales office before rooting around the interior. It was spotless. Cream leather with matching cobalt blue trim. The satnav glowed into life as he pressed the ignition. No more keys for Charlie Arnold.

‘Of course,’ Charlie said.

The satnav spoke like smooth velvet as it tried to continue where it had left off, routing the car to its previous destination: Walkern Road.

Smoking gun. Hook, line and sinker. Caught pink handed.

Charlie could barely contain himself, bouncing along, chatting excitedly to his stream. The audience was a measly eight but would soon balloon, he was sure of it. He would have to thank Danny for spurring him on, for giving him the kick up the backside that now meant he was a Range Rover driver. He felt supreme. He felt unbeatable and as he turned into Walkern Road he knew exactly what he would do next.

‘Round two,’ he announced to his audience.

The space was still empty. Danny probably had agreements with local neighbours. Keep the spot free and in return you get a plate of pork belly or a pint once a week. The haunted car parking space would be the most exciting thing to happen on Walkern Road in a long time.

Since the fire that had killed seven at the pub.

But Charlie would have evidence. Would be the first. Parking in the actual car that would go on to be famous across the world. He licked his lips. They were dry and salty. His hand mopped a bead of sweat from his brow.

Claire will want me again. Everyone will.

Charlie Arnold pulled into the parking space opposite the metal railings and switched the engine off.

He had arrived.

The bitterness of Charlie’s thoughts bugged him.

The hotel was tucked away at the back of some obscene science park. Bright purple signage. A car park as big as a football field. And all he could think was that Danny could scale up his two-bit operation here, run fifty, seventy-five experiences all at once. Bring-your-own-car hauntings. Get the influencers churning out reels. His travel case had a dodgy wheel that skidded as he dragged it into the stuffy reception. As he waited to be checked in, he pushed his tongue around his mouth; it was as if he’d chomped through a multipack of lemons.

An irritating ding summoned him to the counter.

‘Staying long, sir?’ The receptionist made polite conversation.

Shouldn’t have thought so.

‘Sorry, what was that?’

Charlie shook his head.

The lift was like sharing an enclosed space with a men’s rugby team, post-match. He tried to flatten his mood, find equilibrium, as he pinched his nostrils shut. He’d get back in his groove once he started tonight’s research.

Charlie’s promise to his audience was unfiltered authenticity, so he went in blind. Sam, his part-time editor, full-time brother, sorted logistics: hotel bookings, venues, verifying there was something worth visiting. Beyond that, all Charlie wanted was the name and address. Opinions, true, organic, corn-fed opinions, only flourish without additives. Warts, worms and all.

After the fact, though, when the haunting was spent, the well dry and the food cold, that’s when Charlie Arnold got to work. Not in a pejorative way. Holistically.

But what was there to work with here? When life gives you lemons, you park in the stupid space and become bitter as shit.

No.

He went to the poxy bathroom and splashed water on his face from the basin. Danny and the Royal Oak deserved his best. His usual fair crack of the whip. And besides, there was something here. Maybe it wasn’t a ghost story, but it was something new.

He started with the plaque. The name Dunn.

After a burst on the keyboard, Companies House turned up nothing out of the ordinary. Daniel Richard Dunn was who he said he was and bought the pub when he said he did. Before Danny, the Royal Oak had passed from landlord to landlord all the way back to 1752. A fire destroyed it in 1890, and the current brick building was erected in 1899 by the brewers in situ: Greene King.

Pointless.

Charlie slammed his laptop lid down like an impatient teen and marched around his room, all two steps of it. A fire was great for a ghost story: a rebuilt pub bursting forth from the ashes. A tale complete with shady dealings, bodies buried beneath the foundations, every pint poured from its taps covering a multitude of sins.

But it had nothing to do with a parking space fifty metres down the road.

Tony Dunn was a lie. No social media presence. No puff piece in the local rag, The Comet. For all intents and purposes, and Charlie had as much intent as anyone could muster for a traffic warden, it was as if Tony Dunn was a figment of Danny Dunn’s imagination. Which was fine. It made sense. He would confront Danny about his invented brother tomorrow.

Charlie had heartburn. His stomach was in knots, a lead ball of fiery hate.

Full from his disgusting lunch.

No. It was nice.

He popped four antacids from their foil and chewed like time was short. Then he opened a raft of new tabs and searched for the missing drivers and abandoned vehicles from the Polaroids. Each had a number plate. Each should have had some sort of police report or news article attached.

Again, The Comet had nothing. Zip. Nada. Useless.

The DVLA website might as well have laughed at him; the number plates didn’t exist.

He wanted to call the council next, but it was Sunday. Instead, he got lost in the maze of their website. Did he want to find a car park? Report a road traffic incident? Or talk to the Transport, Roads and Footpaths team, but not today? A dead end. A cul-de-sac of civic bullshit. No reports. No white papers. No shitty blog posts. Nothing.

He pictured Danny and Lizzie laughing after he’d left, showing their teeth, mocking him. A siren wailed in the distance, prompting him. Taunting him. He picked up his phone. Sunday meant it was slow, but the police answered. Local missing persons reports, what did they have for him? There were a few, sure, but nothing from Walkern Road. Nothing tied to those cars. Passed from pillar to post via a Sunday constable or two, no one had heard anything about people, or vehicles for that matter, disappearing or being abandoned on Walkern Road.

Which made sense. Didn’t it?

Danny Dunn wanted to create an attraction that put the Royal Oak on the map. Or rather, somewhere in the middle of a Venn diagram, Charlie thought, where culinary excellence and paranormal allusions collided. But there was no history. Pendle Hill had its witches. Ye Olde Kings Head even had its long and bloody past typed up on the menus, for Christ’s sake.

People wanted a bit of foreplay. Hey, come look at this, a traffic warden went missing. Instant erection killer.

Something was at the tip of Charlie’s tongue. Something didn’t quite stack up. He swiped to his photos, stared at the picture he had taken of the polaroid on his phone, the one of the Range Rover.

The garish private plate, HU55L3, stared right back.

This was shit.

That’s what it was. None of it worked. And Charlie was fed up with going to these shitty little places and having his time wasted.

He was wasting his own time.

Since Claire, during it, even.

She had said, hadn’t she? Chasing ghosts. Chasing viewers. Chasing sugary success was folly. Believe it or not, becoming a content creator hadn’t always been Charlie’s dream. A journalism degree, a good one from Warwick, had been the impetus to make it at a newspaper. Then he’d met Claire, fallen in love, and mistaken regular sex, holding hands and good times for permanent, stable concepts.

When it was over, he learned the hard way that happiness didn’t fill your CV. Before he knew it, he couldn’t get his foot in any door as much as get his leg over.

He hadn’t thought of Claire like that in years. The resentment in everything she’d said was like taking a scalpel to an old scar.

He liked his job; he liked what he was doing.

Charlie grabbed the pillow and screamed into it. His laptop slammed for the final time.

He went to an uncomfortable bed at a premier price, determined to wake up tomorrow happy.

Filipino food was new to Charlie.

It hit him instantly as he ducked back into the Royal Oak. The terseness in the Fabia, the solitude of the Range Rover and Danny’s trepidation felt distant, a world away. The air inside was thick with the smells of rendered fat and ground spices. Dishes sizzled as they were laid on the old warped tables. They sat unevenly, their rich sauces and meats sliding suggestively toward Charlie as he took his seat. The pink hand returned, punctuating the hunger, the burnt flesh and flaky skin at odds with the fried chicken and pork in front of him. Charlie thought Danny was dropping coasters around the table, but no, they were Polaroids. Never had a feast been so bewildering, evidence of strangers and their abandoned luxury vehicles, like supernatural wine pairings.

Here sir, take a 2018 Porsche Cayenne Sport, its activewear-clad mystery mother and a cholesterol-raising helping of pork belly lechon kawali—courtesy of the laminated menu.

Despite the curious combinations, this now started to have the feel of a classic haunted hospitality experience. Charlie felt his shoulders relax as he loaded up a plate.

‘You really shouldn’t have gone to all this trouble, just for me,’ he said, tearing into a cube of pork. The more he ate, though, the more he stared at these photos, the more Charlie’s penny started to drop.

Free consultancy. Test-run.

Danny had said it himself. ‘…you’ll be the first to go through this with us…’ Charlie Arnold was a master of detail. It even said that on his channel’s description. Who better to soft launch your new spooky attraction than the man who could point out all the ways in which it missed the mark? And boy did it:

Danny’s performance is peculiar. Part cheeky Chappy, part grave warning. One moment he can’t remember talking to me, the next we’re getting real about true beliefs. That said, the trick with the pink hand is unsettling. Great little detail, the physicality is top notch.

‘What do you think?’

‘The food is—’

‘—The cars, the people.’ Danny interrupted.

Exactly! Do they own the Range Rover? They surely don’t have a fleet of these to be rotated around like ornaments. On Monday it’s the Range, Tuesday the Porsche and then Wednesday we’ll bust out the Maserati. Neglect them to the point of vandalism? Come on. Again, like the pink hand, a lovely effect, but imagine the business loan manager at the bank when Danny explained that keying these cars, worth hundreds of thousands of pounds, was part of the plan.

‘I want to believe it, really I do, Danny.’ Charlie wiped at his mouth and sipped his water, the beef dish, what did Danny call it, caldereta, was heavy.

‘Believe what?’ Danny’s response caught him off guard. His voice was thinner and airy. Charlie looked up from his plate and saw him looking out the window again.

‘It just all needs a bit of work. Polish. Most places will hire an actor, college students, you know? You see it with some of the escape rooms or live experiences from time to time. How did you do the trick with the pink hand, by the way? Food dye?’

Danny looked at this hand, gingerly stroked it, as if noticing it for the first time.

‘I touched it.’

Charlie assumed he meant a platter, hot out of the oven. Said as much.

Danny words were quiet. ‘No. I tried to get in, open the door.’

Okay this is better. Let me eat, woozy on carbs and then ratchet up the horror.

‘The car, you mean? The Range Rover?’

Danny didn’t answer. Instead, he stared at the polaroids, picking one up with care and putting it down in front of Charlie. With a stab he pointed a pink peeling finger at it. This wasn’t the Range Rover; it was an Audi R8. Only its nearside tyres were flat, which gave it a lilt. On its windscreen were three yellow PCNs.

‘It burnt. I ran, back here.’

Charlie approached his response with sincerity. ‘The car was warning you to stay away, huh?’

‘No. Not that. It was telling me to get someone else. That I wasn’t right.’

Charlie pursed his lips, found the associated polaroid, the one with the driver, for the R8. He wiped his greasy fingers on the cuffs of his jeans first before handling it.

‘Do you know who she is?’ He asked Danny.

See if he’s ready for audience participation.

A shrug.

‘I wanted to know…’ He didn’t finish the sentence before being called out the back by Lizzie (the barmaid, Charlie checked; she’s fine with that).

Alone, feeling uncomfortably full and increasingly curious, Charlie pushed away his plate and started to gather up the polaroids of the drivers. A mixture of men and women, all clad in parkas or gym wear, casual clothing, and all mid-stride as if… running from something. Then he leant in closer to each. He angled himself so his live-stream camera caught it all.

‘They’re scared.’ Charlie said. ‘Good direction.’

By the time Danny came back, light and airy now, the platters were tepid and Charlie was ready to call it a day. The experience had been interesting. No two bones about it, this would be something different to write about and he would enjoy compiling all the footage for the video essay. Normalcy seemed to resume as the inaugural test run of the experience wound to a close. The pair agreed for Charlie to pop back in tomorrow, Monday morning, to get some extra incidental footage. And then Danny was chatting eagerly about his plans for the Royal Oak: quiz nights, book clubs and all sorts of social gatherings. The conversation didn’t seem to find its way back around to the parking space or the Range Rover. Not until Charlie was halfway through the door.

‘Are you happy, Charlie, with what you do?’ Danny asked, out of the blue.

‘I’d say so. It wasn’t what I had planned. But life is about being adaptable. I’m content making content.’ It was a joke he had trotted out many times.

Danny didn’t laugh at all. ‘But it could always be better. People always want more.’

‘I suppose they do, Danny. But I think I’m alright, be careful what you wish for, right?’

Danny smiled down at his shoes. ‘You’ll be okay then. When you park.’

Charlie didn’t say anything to that. He saw it as a final stab from a man finding his feet with a new role—the ominous, Cockney-adjacent pub landlord. He’d get there.

One step into the car park, he rocked on his heels, thinking it pertinent to get a picture of the building, gloomier the better as it battled the light, and as he pinched his phone camera in, he saw the landlord’s plaque above the door. He read aloud from the grand brass etching:

“Danny Dunn, licensed to serve Intoxicating Beer & Liquor on the premises . . .”

Charlie laughed to himself, waggled a finger at the sign.

He had forgotten the traffic warden. Again. Blimey.

That’s a nice reveal. A classic.

He whistled a happy tune as he left on foot and walked back to his Fabia. Steam escaped houses that ragged their boilers, it made Charlie feel cosy. Awaiting him was a night in the local Premier Inn before slinking back off home—to Manchester—the next afternoon. Hell, tomorrow he even fancied trying to get a doggy bag of the banquet food leftovers to take with him. All in all…

The Range Rover was gone.

Fifty meters down the pavement, opposite the metal railings, his Fabia was now staring into the empty space, and something bugged him about it. The road around him was soddened, dark with the sort of winter muck that persists. And that was it. The space, where the Range Rover had been, opposite the railings, was dry as a bone; clean too, no leaves, mud or debris of any kind.

Well, because there was a car sat there for months.

It wasn’t that, though. It was as if the space had a boundary. An invisible line that could not be permeated by the elements. He thought it would be warm to the touch, pulsing almost, that he should want to crawl in and never get out… Charlie let out a nervous little laugh. He felt a shiver. He had weirded himself out. It was rare; he couldn’t remember the last time it had happened, in fact.

He stood for a moment longer and listened, it was silent. The kids from school, the ones playing when he had arrived were gone. But wait, it was Sunday. Another nervous laugh, this one tasted bitter.

Walkern Road had felt the same as all the other glorified attractions at first, but now he wasn’t so sure. Everywhere Charlie had visited in the past year, every ghost he had tried to hunt, seemed to come with a trademark or TripAdvisor link. But now an empty parking space, one that was empty because the car had finally, probably, maybe been towed, unsettled him.

A council that pays weekend rates? Give over.

Okay, well it was moved then. Danny was called away, wasn’t he? After delivering the lines about the pink hand, he was summoned away by Lizzie. He must have slipped out the back, and the Range Rover was now hidden down some alleyway or in his garage. He lives around here, he said so.

But all four tyres were flat. You saw it yourself.

He balled his fists. ‘Fine. Let’s do it, then.’

Charlie got in his car and coaxed the Fabia into a spluttering ignition. It was far from fab, itself. It was still running on the spare tyre, with wiper blades so thin they scraped the glass of the windscreen with each flick. The heater spurted into life as sweat mixed with engine oil and wafted warmly through the vents. Charlie was chewing his lip as he released the handbrake and, at the second time of asking, forced the car into first gear.

He rolled it gently into the infamous spot and switched the ignition off.

Silence, even his heavy breathing relented.

Gripping the worn leather of the steering wheel, he felt his neck muscles tense, his shoulders rise so they touched his earlobes. He waited; nothing happened. Charlie gave it a fair crack, though. He let nothing keep happening for a further five minutes.

‘He got me,’ Charlie muttered to his barely double-digit viewers.

Danny is taking the piss. What a waste of time this has been. I should make an example of them, charlatans. That will probably get more views than my usual shit anyway. Christ, I need a new car. A better car.

‘Huh.’ Charlie’s hand hurt; he had been wringing the steering wheel like a chamois leather. He shook himself loose from the negative thought. He’d need to check the footage back, had he said something out loud?

Charlie was all parked out. It was the food, he told himself. Too salty. Too greasy. Too decadent on a work day. It was the constant walking back and forth to his car. Now, tired and wanting to switch off, Charlie started the Fabia back up and drove to the hotel, but not before he unhooked the camera from his lapel, looked deep into the lens, and finished his stream in a mood.

‘Haunted parking space? Come on.’

Danny was a different man sat in Charlie Arnold’s passenger seat; gone was the distraction of the pub, now there was surliness to his demeanour, an intentionality.

This sudden clandestine meeting had put Charlie on edge, just a little. Moreso on the back foot, which was unfair, really, because he’d physically taken two paces ahead to scoop his breakfast from the front seat. Crumbs of prawn cocktail crisps, all orange and tangy, were now stuck in the trim. Charlie fiddled with the heater, waiting for Danny to speak, their silent breath only adding to the growing condensation.

‘Now nothing is probably going to happen to you, probably,’ Danny said.

The camera. Consent.

‘Sorry, sorry, before you start. You don’t mind that I’m live, right?’

Charlie tapped the camera nestled on his flannel overshirt.

‘No bother. The bodybuilding couple did all that streaming stuff,’ Danny said, closing his eyes for a moment before continuing. The words came a bit quicker now, a bit garbled and unsure. ‘Now you’ll be the first to go through this with us. But I don’t think anything will happen.’

A far cry from the previous weekend, thought Charlie. The Marquis of Bixby in Chester had been slick with the presentation for their haunted hotel. They had guaranteed five vignettes for Charlie to capture on camera, culminating in the whopper, the doozy, the pentagram Ouija board extravaganza, their terrible words, not his. All after being informed the day before that he would be sandwiched between the guy that rated takeaways and a girl that was on Britain’s Got Talent. Hauntings on a schedule, the working title for his longform essay due out next week, should Sam finish the edit.

‘What exactly may or may not happen, Danny?’ Charlie made sure to speak loud and clear for the microphone.

‘Did you see the abandoned car on the way in?’ Danny asked. ‘About fifty meters down from here. The Range Rover opposite the metal railings.’

There might have been. Danny caught the doubt in Charlie’s eyes.

‘Everyone has the same reaction. Start your car. Trust me.’

This was new; fresh and a little unsettling. How would Charlie frame the story when it came time to write the script? The haunted abattoir in Surrey had hired an actor, clothed in bloody rags, to chase a mooing cow across the gravel drive.

Then there was the old mill near the infamous Pendle Hill. Tubes, Charlie suspected—little tubes that bubbled air to suggest drowning witches, splashed by the last gasps of the occult. Disney, eat your heart out. But never had someone walked him to his car and simply instructed him to drive. Not since his test, in fact, some seventeen years ago.

‘Hang a right out of here, keep it slow,’ Danny said.

Mirror. Signal. Manoeuvre.

The wet tarmac slapped as the Fabia rolled forward, accompanied by the clink-clunk of the indicator and an awkward pause between the men. Charlie craned forward through a clear patch of windscreen, the sky sinking lower, its grey deepening to match the pavement. Then, just as Danny had said, fifty meters down the road, he saw it: a space in the gridlock on the left-hand side, opposite the metal railings on the right. Directly in front of the space sat a cobalt blue Range Rover, parked illegally on a yellow line, facing them. A brand new model; it had once been a beautiful car, worth well over a hundred thousand pounds. But now it seemed… wrong, abandoned, somehow defeated. All four tyres were flat, and brown silty mud worked its way up the paintwork, cut through by long white key marks across the doors and wings. The jagged edges looked sharp. Stuck to its windscreen were four increasingly crooked banana-coloured envelopes. Like teeth denied floss. They were Penalty Charge Notices. £35 a pop, rising to £70 if not paid within fourteen days.

There was a space just in front of the Range, and Danny instructed him to pull in there.

Convenient, thought Charlie.

‘Close to a year now,’ Danny said, looking straight ahead at the Range’s windshield, his voice lower.

‘Surprised it hasn’t been towed.’

‘They all give up. It’s like they forget.’

‘Who forgets?’

‘The traffic wardens. Jobsworths at first, slapping them on like confetti. But they change and traffic wardens are nothing if not creatures of habit. Touching the windscreen does something to them. It did something to Tony.’

‘Who’s Tony?’

He frowned, for a moment Danny’s face contorted and he mouthed the name. Tony. It slipped like a smoke ring from between his lips before he swallowed and answered the question.

‘Anyone on this street could tell you Tony Dunn was the traffic warden for thirty years. Then one day, a car parks in that spot. Tony stuck two tickets on it and vanished. Now no one can remember him, I struggle myself.’

‘But there’s four on that windshield. Four right?’ Charlie had to look again, it was blurry.

‘Yep. Because that’s a different car, son.’

Charlie held his hands up, mouthed a sorry, and waited, watching the PCNs flap in the breeze as if waving back at him.

‘You’re alright. I don’t tell it well; it’s fuzzy, like a dream you want to remember but fades as soon as you wake up. Being closer helps. I remember Tony sometimes. Six cars, to my best knowledge—there could be more—but six I know of, nice ones too. They’ve all parked there and been abandoned. Not just abandoned but forgotten. Like they ain’t cars anymore, they become statues or monuments.’

‘That’s like a hundred-thousand-pound car. What happened to the owner?’

Danny shrugged.

‘Who is the owner?’

Another shrug. ‘Like I say, it’s fuzzy.’

Charlie laughed. ‘Danny, are you saying that this parking space is haunted?’

Danny took his time, really thinking about what he wanted to say. Charlie recognised it as rehearsal, but perhaps it was something else.

‘I bought the pub back end of 2019 right before everything shut down. I’ve had a chance to sell it since then, make some money back. I’m forty-six, mortgaged up to my arsehole, pardon my French. I wheeze when I wake up because I smoke like a chimney, and my knees protest every time I change a barrel. My sense of self-preservation ain’t my strongest suit.’

‘Okay.’

‘And I’m saying that I wouldn’t park there.’

It needed work, Charlie thought.

He liked elements of it. The idea of a haunted parking space was novel. But the reality had more holes than swiss cheese. Local councils were a mess of red tape and inefficiency, wrapped in numbing smiles. Running posh cars was expensive, and plenty of drug runners drove tanks like the Range Rover. That some guy had chucked his motor in any old spot and then been arrested, stabbed, or fled town didn’t a ghost story make.

Danny rubbed his nose, wrinkled his face, he was tired. ‘Do you believe in any of this? Is there a world where you could believe something more is happening with that car?’

Charlie stared at the Range Rover and for a second the breeze stilled, the tickets stopped flapping. It loomed blue and beaten, holding its breath waiting for Charlie to answer.

There’s always a world.

‘Yes.’ Charlie told the truth.

Charlie Arnold made a promise when he started his channel. His viewers would get the truth, unfiltered and unaltered. Where some channels deployed ruthless cynicism as entertainment, he wanted to forge a different path. Because the truth was that Charlie Arnold wanted to believe. Wanted nothing more than to uncover some deep and existential meaning behind all of this, and when he did, he would bring his viewers along for the thrill of the ride. But he would not lie.

The problem was in the five years he had been investigating tales of the supernatural and unexplained, everything had been very natural, very explained and very delicious. The truth was now stale and growth was stagnant. His long-form essays, so detailed and thorough in their review of experiences, couldn’t hold a candle to the next generation of content creators who knew that the masses were intent on swiping to the next bigger, sexier thing. He leaned back in the passenger seat, letting his head bump on the coverless support, and wondered if anyone like Danny would ever thrill him again.

There were ten people watching the live stream. Charlie wanted them to know he still believed, so that ten might once again become a thousand.

Danny seemed to accept Charlie’s answer, which is why it was strange when he abruptly got out of the Fabia and started walking back towards the pub, splashing through the thin puddles on the pavement, leaving the door open. Clambering out after him, Charlie called out. Danny stopped, turned to look at him, deftly lighting a cigarette as he waited. Charlie watched him savour the hit of nicotine as he took a big drag, before asking his question.

‘Are we done?’

‘Na, I just couldn’t look at the space anymore. Tell me, what was the traffic warden’s name?’

Charlie blanched. Like he himself was smoking the cigarette, a headrush rolled over him, he wanted to be sick.

‘Exactly, leave your car there. Food will be ready and I’ve got more to show you.’

‘Will it be okay there? Can’t I just park it at the pub again?’

‘Sunday. And besides, there’s no traffic warden, remember? When you leave, when you come back to your car, if you can, I want you to do me a favour.’

Fighting not to wretch and with irritation building, Charlie’s tone raised as he answered with a clipped ‘Okay?’

Danny stepped toward him, grabbing the sleeve of his shirt with his bright pink hand. The grip was intense. And his eyes, under the hood of his cap, were wet.

‘Park in that spot. Leave your camera on.’ Danny tapped it for good measure. ‘See what happens.’ He let go of him and turned to walk back. ‘Come on then, food will be getting cold.’

Charlie Arnold crawled along Walkern Road, hunched over the wheel, looking for the turning to the carpark.

The two lane street had been swallowed by bumper-to-bumper cars, blurred by the drizzling morning. About three hundred metres long and dotted with cute terrace houses on either side, Walkern Road curved gently up a slope and disappeared behind a cluster of evergreen trees. It was nothing special, it was pleasant, a man with a dog even strolled past. Maybe a Pekingese, Charlie couldn’t see properly, either way it was far too small for its owner, who resembled a lumbering giant tottering after runaway dinner.

His eyes fell upon his destination, The Black Boar pub, which, according to its fading tarp sign, served a selection of real ales and boasted the ‘Kusina de Manila’ all-you-can-eat-buffet. Charlie sighed. Ghost stories didn’t start with a pint of Guinness and adobo fried rice, he thought. No, they started with dark, stormy nights, gruesome murders, and finished with the gut punch that you’d always been the caretaker, Mr Torrance.

Parked up, next to a Ford Transit strung across two bays, he took a moment to drink in the building. The Black Boar was far too big for Walkern Road; it was a two-tone pub, both bloated and desolate. Maybe once, maybe on opening night, it was full, but he doubted if it ever reached a quarter of its capacity now. It was a sprawling Victorian building: all the beams, scattergun windows, and the dwindling charm he had come to expect in his line of work. The outdoor seating told a similar story; green moss had started a battle for territory with the wood. Still, punters would flock faithfully, gulping fruity ciders and munching salty crisps, at the first hint of sunshine come spring.

He cracked the window an inch. Charlie had been sat for a few minutes, and the steam dripping from his old Skoda Fabia made him feel seedy, there was a funk. On the winter breeze came the noise of kids playing; laughter and giggles floated in. It unnerved him, but he didn’t know why. After checking his phone was on and securely fastened, he got out the car and walked towards the pub.

Ducking into the low arch of the doorway, he inhaled the national fragrance: stale beer, greasy food, and second-hand smoke. As British as Paddington Bear, there’s a joke in there about Peru, thought Charlie. At eleven on a Sunday, it was just him and the barmaid—can he call her that nowadays? She saw him and gestured at the glitzy taps. He hoped the man called Danny was lurking nearby too.

‘What will it be?’

‘Sparkling water, please. I’m driving. I’m here to see Danny, about the—’

‘—here to see a man about a ghost. We was expecting you, make yourself comfortable. I’ll go get him, luv.’

He took his drink in his left hand and lugged his laptop bag in his right to a table, which he sat down at.

‘Which one’s yours?’

The man had appeared from nowhere. He was looking past Charlie, over him and out the window.

‘I’m sorry?’

‘Car. That old one, is it?’

When he pointed, Charlie noticed the man’s right hand was pink, the flesh looking sunburnt and sore. It was at odds with the pasty cream of his face, shadowed under the hood of his cap.

‘I’m Danny by the way. Owner and manager of this prestigious establishment.’

The G in ‘prestigious’ was almost hard; Charlie hoped affectation rather than regular pronunciation, for Danny’s sake. The baby-pink hand now thrust its way towards him, which Charlie grabbed somewhere between dominant and I’m just happy to be here, sir.

‘Yeah, that’s mine, the Skoda. Do I need a permit or something?’

‘Perfect. Nah, you’re alright, mate. Remind me, you’re the guy that does the eating challenges. Bit skinny, ain’t ya?’

A common occurrence, in Charlie’s experience. He adopted the tried-and-tested friendly smile and, after a sip of his fizzy water, which bubbled on his tongue, let him down gently.

‘Nope. I’ve seen him though; puts it away, filthy beard. I investigate paranormal stories. Long-form video essayist. More words, less plates. Remember, we spoke on the phone?’

He wouldn’t remember but would insist he did. Charlie wouldn’t hold that against Danny. Charlie Arnold was likely the latest on a long conveyor belt of content creators that would be visiting the Black Boar in the coming months. Such was the circuit that, as soon as a new experience was unveiled, like moths to a flame they would come.

But what was the experience?

The anonymity suited Charlie. Like Clark Kent, his colleagues oblivious to his alter ego. Charlie didn’t wear glasses, but that wasn’t the point. The mystery tickled him. Danny hadn’t switched on yet, hadn’t clocked that the experience should have started as soon as Charlie walked through the heavy pub doors. He could get a sense of the real person before the bravado started. Charlie thought his viewers would welcome that. That was his niche, what made his content unique in a sea of conformity and clickbait thumbnails.

‘Yeah, yeah of course. Essays.’ Danny wasn’t looking at Charlie, even now, when sat next to him at the table. He was still looking out into the carpark. ‘Charlie, do you want the food or the story first?’

Charlie plumped for story.

‘Alright, do you want a hand with your bag?’

The pub was empty, not a soul in sight. Even the barmaid, woman, person had disappeared.

‘Where are we going?’

‘Best to talk privately. Do it properly. In your car.’

Charlie Arnold, observer of one hundred and sixty-two haunted hospitalities, hadn’t expected much upon his arrival at The Black Boar in Stevenage that Sunday morning, but now he was intrigued.