The House That Jack Built

FOURTEEN

Gwen was getting all motherly, tugging the blanket tighter around Ianto as he shivered. 'What did you see?' she asked him.

'Not much to be honest,' he admitted, staring at the fire Jack had just lit and willing it to get going. If it didn't get a good blaze on within five minutes, he'd start shoving furniture in the grate, he was so cold. 'I've been a bit out of it. I heard the pounding on the walls though, and the TV turned on by itself.'

'Power surge…' said Jack in a casual manner that didn't convince Ianto for one moment.

It didn't convince Gwen either. 'And the walls?'

'That'll be the ghosts,' was Jack's dismissive reply. 'I'm going to take a look around,' he said with a grin, changing the subject before either could ask any more questions. In case they tried anyway, he strolled out of the room.

'That's our Jack,' Ianto muttered. 'Quick with the knob gags and melodrama but light on cold, hard facts.'

'You know what he's like,' Gwen said, putting some more dry wood on the fire.

'Don't I just.'

'There's certainly a lot more to this place than meets the eye,' Gwen said, pulling her PDA out of her jacket pocket, opening up some of the files on the house that she had ported across and handing it to Ianto. 'The history of the building is a tabloid's dream: suicides, murders… and you'll never believe who the first person to own it was.'

'Jack.'

Gwen swore under her breath. 'Fine, make me look an idiot. Everyone knew but me.'

'Sorry. But there's not much about him that I don't know.' Ianto stood up and moved over to the rug directly in front of the fire. 'Actually, that's not true,' he continued, sitting on the rug and holding his hands out towards the flames. 'I doubt I know a fraction of what's worth knowing, but what little of his life is on file I've found it, read it…' he looked up at her and gave an embarrassed smile, 'learnt it. I'm like a stupid teenager swotting up with a copy of Smash Hits.'

Gwen rested a hand on his shoulder. 'You do know that he's…'

'Just a shag?' Ianto nodded. 'Yes I know. I can't help it though, I've never been much good at casual.' He looked up at her. 'Don't tell him. I don't want to look stupid.'

She squatted down and gave him a peck on the cheek. 'I won't, you're not stupid either, just…'

'Deluded?'

She smiled. 'Yeah, that sounds about right.'

'You wouldn't believe how many places he's lived,' Ianto said. 'That's why I didn't mention it. I assumed it was just a coincidence. He's had places all over Cardiff. Lots of them under false names of course, Robert Gossage, Alan Jones, John Smith… But I've followed the chain of sales. He keeps buying places then selling them on.'

'So he watches Property Ladder.'

'It's not that. You know what he's like, he's not interested in money. He's obsessed with trying to find a home, that's what I think.'

'Maybe.' Gwen looked sadly at Ianto. He really had fallen for Jack, hadn't he? 'He did right to sell this place on though,' she said. 'Look at the news reports.'

Ianto got the hint, nodding and reading the small screen in front of him. 'So the question is: did this place turn its residents mad, or are we stood in a psycho magnet?'

'Now there's a lovely thought,' Gwen admitted. 'Perhaps it's just as well the owners did a bunk.'

'They weren't so bad,' Ianto said. 'Just scared. Can't say I blame them either. Still, they tried to look after me, even with everything else going on.' He smiled, the warmth finally creeping back into him. 'That makes them a decent couple in my book. I may send them a Christmas card.'

'"Season's Greetings from the nutter in your airing cupboard"?'

'That sort of thing.'

'Do you remember anything?' Gwen asked. 'Between disappearing on the high street and reappearing here?'

Ianto's face lost some of its humour. 'It was strange… Like a hypnic jerk.'

'A what?'

'That feeling you get when you're just about to fall asleep and your body jolts as if you've fallen or tripped.'

'Oh…' Gwen rolled her eyes. ' That. You're the first person I've met that wouldn't just call it "that jerky sleep thing".'

'I read books,' Ianto joked. 'Get over it. Anyway, it was like that, a jolt through my body, this feeling of being somewhere else… Nothing specific, just a sense of having moved.' An uncomfortable look passed across his face. 'It scrambled my head. I didn't really know what was happening… It felt like there was something else there.'

'Something or someone?'

'Someone.' He shrugged. 'Like I say, though, it shook me up. Who knows what was going on, eh? Next thing I know, I'm waking up on the floor over there with the whole house going mental.'

'Due to a "power surge".'

Ianto chuckled. 'Could have been worse. He could have said subsidence.'

Gwen nodded. 'When Jack starts talking like a cover story, you know you're in trouble.'

They heard the front door open and exchanged surprised looks. They heard Jack's voice from the stairs. 'Changed your mind?' Neither Gwen nor Ianto could hear the reply, but they recognised Rob's voice.

'I didn't think we'd be seeing them again,' said Gwen, heading out into the hallway.

Ianto listened as Rob and Julia talked about the outside world having 'gone'. The front door opened again as Jack stepped outside. Ianto considered going out after him but decided against it. The fire was just starting to warm him, and a night of impossibilities was beginning to make him jaded. The outside world has vanished? Yes, of course it has, bound to happen…

After a few moments, Jack walked back into the lounge followed by Gwen.

'You feeling any better?' he asked Ianto.

'I'm feeling … Frankly, that's an improvement.'

'Good.'

Rob and Julia walked in. Cowed by whatever they had seen outside, there was little argument left in either of them.

'OK,' said Jack. 'For now we're stuck in this place, so let's make the most of it — drag the equipment in, get set up and start trying to find out what's going on.' He turned to Rob and Julia. 'I know this is freaking you both out, but I'm going to need you to keep it together and help me out here, OK?'

'Do we have a choice?' asked Julia.

'Yes,' Jack replied. 'I could drug you and throw you in the boot of the car.'

'Jack,' Gwen hissed.

'What?' Jack replied with a laugh. 'It's a choice!' His smile vanished as he stared at Rob and Julia. 'Believe me, I'll do it for your safety and ours if it looks like the best option.'

'We should always let him deal with the civilians,' Ianto said. 'He's just so good at it.' He got up and started stamping the circulation back into his feet. 'I know it might not seem like it,' he said to Rob and Julia, 'but right now we're the best chance you've got of seeing it through the night.'

'That supposed to make me feel better?' asked Rob.

'If you knew how many times we've probably saved your life already over the years it would,' Jack chipped in. 'This is what we do. Now let us get on and do it.'

Rob held up his hands in surrender. 'Fine…'

'OK,' said Jack. 'We need space and security.'

He walked out of the lounge and headed to the next door along the hall.

'If I remember right, the study has a… aha!' He pointed to the lock in the old door. 'Got the key for this?'

'In the kitchen,' Julia said, walking past him to get it. 'But it's a dining room not a study.'

'Oh, nobody has studies any more,' Jack said sadly, walking in and pulling the cheap pine table over to the far wall. Rob grabbed the chairs, as always happier to be distracted by doing something. An old-fashioned sideboard filled with Julia's aunt's dinner service and some ugly brown glass trifle bowls was left where it was.

Julia came in and handed Jack the key.

'What good's that going to do?' asked Rob.

'You're the one who was hiding in the lounge earlier swinging pokers at people,' Jack retorted, dropping the key into his pocket. 'The night is yet young, who knows how it'll end up?'

He turned to look out of the French windows that filled the far wall. 'This is new.'

'How do you know?' Julia asked, a little ashamed that she couldn't say whether he was right or not.

'I used to live here,' he said. 'Long time ago.'

'It must have been,' Julia replied. 'Auntie Joan was here for… I don't know, thirty years.'

Jack smiled. 'I'm older than I look.'

'He works out,' Ianto said from the doorway. 'What are we bringing in?'

'You stay by the fire for now,' Jack said. 'We can manage.'

'I'd rather get moving, get the circulation flowing.'

Jack grinned. 'I'd love to help but I'm kinda busy!'

'Story of my life.'

'There's a couple of big canvas bags. We'll need as many monitors as we can strip out, all the audio/visual stuff you can get your hands on, basically. We want this place wired for sound.'

'"Power from the needle to the plastic",' Ianto replied, straight-faced, and walked out.

Jack stared after him. 'Please tell me he didn't just quote Cliff Richard at me… He's so dumped if he did.'

***

Ianto's arms and legs were throbbing, bursts of pins and needles erupting all over as he stepped outside the front door. It was still raining. 'Oh God,' he sighed, 'here's me, about to get hypothermia.'

He ran to the SUV, opened the back door and climbed inside as quickly as possible. Sitting down in the back section, surrounded by the monitoring equipment, he shook some of the water from his hair and worked out what he could take apart without breaking anything. Realising he was missing a trick, he pulled his set of keys out of his pocket and reached forward to turn on the engine and heater. 'Ah…' he sighed as air began to pump out of the vents, 'I may just stay here all night.'

'If you do, so am I,' Gwen said, climbing in.

'Sorry,' Ianto grinned, 'but I've baggsied electrics.' He pulled a toolkit out of the glovebox. 'You carry the bags.'

'I hate you,' Gwen told him, grabbing one of the bags.

'May it keep you as warm as these heaters do me,' Ianto replied. 'Close the door, you're letting in a draft.'

Chuckling as Gwen ran back towards the house, he pulled one of the monitors forward and began to disconnect its cabling.

Gwen nearly slipped on the polished wood of the hall floor but managed to regain her balance by grabbing hold of the banister.

'Careful,' Jack said from the dining room doorway, 'we wouldn't want you falling over and damaging the equipment.'

'I am so going to smack someone this evening,' she said, shoving the bag at him.

Rob watched Jack unpack reams of cabling from the large bag before deciding to leave him to it. The man had made it perfectly clear that his and Julia's input was far from necessary. Arrogant bastard. Rob was beginning to wish he had never called him. The minute all of this strange stuff had started, he and Julia should have been out of the house and away. He bet they would have been fine if they hadn't hung around to help the American's prissy boyfriend.

He went into the kitchen, unsure of what to do with himself but determined to find something to occupy him. He thought about putting the kettle on but decided against it; they'd only ask him to make them a drink as well, and he was neither brave enough to refuse them nor gracious enough to do it. He didn't want to be their slave.

He started poking through the cupboards aimlessly, straightening tins and cartons, ordering things a little more. He opened drawers, altering the order of the cutlery (it went fork, knife, then spoon, obviously … that was, after all, the order in which you needed them at the dining table, and why were the forks and spoons not nestling inside one another? It saved on space and looked much neater). He refolded tea towels, matching corner to corner. He turned the glasses so that they rested on their brims (why would you do it any other way? Did you want them to fill with dust?). He caught his reflection in the window, tongue poking out of the corner of his mouth in utter concentration, and it drew him to a halt. What was he doing? He didn't care about this sort of thing normally. Why did it suddenly seem so vital now?

He hugged himself, the sudden urge to cry building in his belly.

What was wrong with him?

Julia wanted to be where it was busiest, standing in the corner of the dining room watching Jack as he uncurled wires and stacked cases of equipment on the table.

'Help me out with this?' he asked.

'Sure.'

'Cool.' He held up a deep tray of components, miniature video cameras and microphones. 'I need to get these up all over the place, and if you help out I'll tell you all about ghosts and why they don't exist. Fair deal?'

She smiled and nodded. 'Sounds good to me.'

'OK.' He handed her the tray while he grabbed gaffer tape and as much cabling as he could carry. 'We'll start at the top and work our way down.'

He marched out of the door with Julia following.

'So…' he began. 'Ghosts… The majority of all supernatural phenomena are easily attributed to something else. We are so attuned to the fiction of spooks and haunting that we leap on it as soon as we see something strange. You see, our brains are built to demand explanation and they'll always opt for the most familiar thing they find, in the belief that familiarity equals likelihood.'

Julia was having to jog slightly to keep up with him as he bounded along the first-floor landing and up the next flight of stairs. 'But we actually saw a woman commit suicide. It was hazy but clear — it was real. It wasn't something we mistook for a woman in a bath; it was a woman in a bath.'

'OK,' Jack replied. 'But that doesn't make it a ghost.'

'What makes you so sure?'

They'd reached the top floor and Jack turned to face her. 'Because I know there's no such thing. I've been dead, and there was nothing there. The only soul I've got was given me by Nina Simone.'

'You've been dead?'

'Oh yeah.' Jack poked around in the tray Julia was carrying, picking out a small camera. 'And now I'm walking around. Doesn't make me a ghost though, does it?'

'What was it?' Julia asked. 'Like a near-death experience or something?'

'As near as you can get. I died Julia, vaporised, ceased to exist. But something — and no it wasn't supernatural — brought me back. Weird stuff happens — and believe me my life has got weirder since — but there will always be an explanation for it somewhere.' He fixed the camera to the roof with gaffer tape, coiled the video cable and dropped it down the gap between the banisters. 'You read any Arthur C. Clarke?'

'Used to watch his programme with my mum, Mysterious World or whatever it was called.'

'There was a lot more to Arthur than that,' Jack said with a smile. 'I shared some wonderful summers with him in Colombo.'

'Of course you did,' Julia replied dismissively.

Jack grinned, not caring in the least whether she believed him or not. He grabbed another camera and walked into one of the empty rooms. 'He wrote three "laws" over the years, the third of which is probably the most famous, though the others are just as accurate.' He fixed the second camera in place in the far corner and trailed the cable back out of the room with them, dropping it again down towards the ground floor. 'He said that "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic".'

'I've heard that,' Julia admitted as they walked into the next room.

'Yeah, I find myself saying it a lot in this job. That's the problem with the clever things people say, they get quoted so often people forget to pay attention. Think about it, imagine everything we take for granted today and how miraculous it would have seemed a couple of centuries ago. We're always getting closer to understanding, always. Ghosts? Visions? They're unexplained today, but tomorrow they'll be science.'

A third camera in place, they began to head down the stairs again.

'OK,' said Julia. 'I accept the idea that we may have explanations for weird stuff in years to come, but help me out, what could it have been that we saw? It was so real.'

'It was in here, yes?' Jack walked into the spare bedroom.

'Yes.' Julia was embarrassed at how scared she felt walking back into the room, her heart beating faster in her chest and her breath becoming laboured. 'She was right there,' she said, pointing to the bed.

'Which is exactly where the bath used to be,' Jack said. 'When I lived here this was the bathroom. I imagine your aunt changed it after what happened in here.'

'What happened?'

'Your aunt used to keep lodgers, do you remember them?'

That feeling of guilt again. 'I didn't really know her that well. We didn't visit much when I was a kid. You know how it can be with family, you go your separate ways.'

Jack nodded. 'Know what you mean. Well, it doesn't matter. She had lodgers. It helped pay the bills, I guess, stopped her rattling around the place. But… something bad happened to both of them. One, a librarian called Kerry Robinson, slit her wrists in the bath. Right there,' he pointed at the bed.

'So what I saw was just the past? I was watching something that had happened years ago?'

'Exactly. No ghosts, no spirits, just history becoming visible somehow.'

'But how's that possible?'

'That's what we need to find out.'

'But it wasn't a ghost?'

'No.'

'Just an image?'

Jack grinned, fixing a camera in the roof. 'You got it!'

'So when I keep seeing that fat man, he's just an image too?' Julia was beginning to stutter and shake. Jack hadn't realised she'd been this close to breaking, had thought she was getting it together. He never had been much good at reading people.

'It's OK,' he said. 'That's my point, nothing here can harm you. It's just images, that's all, like watching old movie footage. It has no physical presence.'

'But… Rob got wet.'

'What?'

'He tried to help her, the woman in the bathtub, she was right in front of him so he tried to help her. To begin with, he couldn't touch her, his hand kept going through her,'

'That's right…'

'But then, just before she vanished, he got wet … the water from the bath soaked him, it was real… he touched it.'

Jack didn't know what to say to that, had no explanation for how it could be possible. 'OK… So that's… weird, I'll give you that.'

'So they can touch us, they are real.'

'I don't know. We'll find out, though, like I said. That's what we do.'

'But the fat man…'

'Don't worry about him,'

'You don't understand… If he can touch us, he can hurt us…'

Jack suddenly noticed a curious smell.

Julia was pointing over his shoulder.

'He's behind you!' she shouted.

The fist, a sweaty, pink baseball bat of fingers, hit Jack in the small of his back, making him cry out with pain. His leg gave way beneath him as the two fat hands clasped his head, the wet palms oozing over his face, the smell of sweat and sex so strong on them that he felt the urge to gag.

'Run,' he said to Julia through mashed lips, though she hadn't waited to be told, pulling herself out of the room and to the top of the stairs where she began shouting for help. Her words were muted, Jack's ears sealed shut beneath the man's grip, but he could see the force of them in her red cheeks and the spittle that flew from her lips.

He grabbed his attacker's wrists — refusing to even think about the impossibility of such a thing; like he'd said to Julia, answers always came in the end — forcing his thumbs into the tendons, trying to stop the crushing grip and the probing of nails dressed with brown crescents of dirt into his eyes and mouth.

There were bright white explosions in his eyes as the pressure increased. He stamped down with his feet, desperately trying to kick his attacker, shatter a knee, perhaps, or break a toe. Fat he may have been, but he was strong too. He shook Jack and squeezed hard, stealing the force from his blows.

Jack was quite convinced the man was going to kill him. While this wasn't the irrevocable catastrophe for him that it was for most people, he had little doubt that the man wouldn't stop at one victim. Having promised Julia he would keep her safe, this bit deep into his conscience. Why hadn't she just run? He saw her move into the main bedroom… What was she doing? He wasn't to find out — his attacker shoved him towards the floor, and there was an awful cracking noise in his ears as the man's foot came down on the back of his skull.