Disclaimers: don't own any of the characters from Relic Hunter or make any money from my fiction writing.

Chapter 2.

Syd and Nigel drove for another hour through increasingly horizontal, sleety rain before they reached the spot on the map that Penelope had marked with a large cross.

'Well,' began Nigel, wiping the mist from the window - their collected breath had steamed it up. 'The house should be somewhere around here…Bloody Hell!'

An unexpected flash of lightening momentarily lit up a tall, weather-boarded house on a hill. It towered three stories high, with additional windows in a steeply slanting, gabled roof. A slightly off-kilter, cone-topped turret to one side gave it a decided air of American gothic.

'Why am I conjuring up images of Psycho, The House of the Hill, The Haunting, Edward Scissorhands, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and practically every other scary movie I've even seen,' groaned Nigel. 'That's Hostler's house, isn't it?'

'I reckon so,' breathed Sydney. She was squinting through the rain towards the looming, dark building, her hand still rested on the steering wheel. 'And, uh, it doesn't look right for The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. But for the others – spot on!'

Nigel gawped at her, faintly horrified. 'Isn't this the moment you're suppose to reassure me everything will be just fine?'

She grinned, squeezing his knee. 'Everything will be just fine, Nigel! It's just a little creepy…that's all. Now go open the gate.'

'Me?'

Nigel glanced over towards a tall, rusting gate, its iron-work moulded to form ornate sculptures of flowers and other foliage – although, at that moment, they appeared more reminiscent of man-eating Trifids. The icy rain was still pounding down, too – and he knew just how much Sydney hated being cold and wet. 'Well, if I must,' he muttered, and pulling his woollen coat tight around him, threw open the car door.'

The gate was heavy and, although the padlock was broken, it took Nigel some effort to push it open against the buffeting wind and rain. It was only when he was nearly done, however, that he noticed the sign lying on the floor.

It was a modern sign, stark black letters printed upon a vibrant yellow: 'POLICE CRIME SCENE INVESTIGATION: DO NOT CROSS.'

His every vision of bloodshed intensifying, Nigel picked it up and threw himself back into the car.

'Syd, look at this,' he panted, his coat and hair dripping wet. 'I…I thought this place hadn't been inhabited since the 1930's.'

'Yeah, that's right,' replied Sydney, cringing slightly as she edged the car slowly through the gates onto a bumpy and steeply ascending driveway. 'But…uh, there has been some sort of ongoing criminal activity associated with it.'

'Criminal activity?' Nigel's eyes narrowed sharply. 'What sort of, um, criminal activity?'

'There might have been the odd, uh, murder…just one or two, or maybe six, taking place around this time of the year. But nothing since, oh, the mid-1990's. Nothing to worry about!'

'Murders!' squeaked Nigel. 'And you tell me n…oh God! What was that?'

They both jolted forward in their seats as Sydney slammed on the breaks. 'Phew,' she sighed. 'I think it was a cat. It shot across the drive in front of us. It must be terrified in this storm, poor thing – I'm so glad I didn't hit it.'

'Great…but what's going to hit us?' moaned Nigel. 'I can't believe you've brought me Relic Hunting on Christmas Eve at a House of Horrors!'

IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII

The double-doors at the front of the house were covered in peeling black pain, and were approached up a steep set of steps. There was no point in using the brass knocker or even in picking the lock. One of the doors was hanging ajar, anyway.

Sydney pushed it open, and it heaved a predictably mournful groan. She shone her torch into a large and once plush lobby, with heavily patterned, faded wallpaper, and ragged, scarlet drapes. Generously sized doors led off to a half a dozen chambers on each side, and a wide, shallow-stepped staircase wound up to first and second floor landings. Spider-webs criss-crossed the ceiling in a macabre mimicry of the Christmas decorations they'd left far-behind in their warm, modern houses and the cheery offices of the university.

'Well, this is homely,' quipped Nigel. His flashlight darted nervously around the cavernous space, resting on a dominating portrait positioned half-way up the staircase.

It portrayed a bulky man dressed in a sharp, black suit and a bowler hat. In his mouth was a large cigar; on his arm was a curvaceous, raven-haired beauty with a tight-lipped pout.

'Alfred Hostler?' asked Nigel.

'I'm guessing so,' replied Sydney. 'And the woman must be his wife, Marjorie. She was the daughter of the mayor of Boston – her union with the King of the criminal underworld caused quite a scandal, as you'd guess. Then she died young, I believe.'

'Murder?' shuddered Nigel.

'I don't think so. If I recall, it was a sudden illness or something. Some say it destroyed Hostler as much as it did her. He vanished completely soon after – although most believe he ended up the victim of jealous rivals, face down in the Charles River!'

'She looks nearly as shifty as him,' replied Nigel, regarding the portrait warily, then added quickly. 'Although I guess she still didn't deserve to die. No doubt she wasn't as bad as he was.'

'No doubt,' echoed Sydney, 'he was a killer alright! Woh!'

They both started as the sound of a slamming door resonated from far-off in the upper echelons of the house.

'The wind, right?' grimaced Nigel.

'Right,' replied Syd, her confident tone wavering only slightly. 'Okay, let's get moving. If you were a 1930's gangster, where would you hide your most precious plunder?'

Nigel shrugged: 'Under the floor-boards, in a safe behind a portrait, in the loft…?' He jumped again, as another door slammed, this time slightly closer, maybe on the first floor landing. 'Although I'd rather not go up there!'

'Mmm, well, maybe we don't have to,' started Sydney. 'Al Capone had his secret compartments in the basement – behind the swimming pool to be precise!'

'So you think we should go down, first? That sounds like a great idea…' Even as Nigel spoke, a strange, low, screeching noise, akin to that of a large piece of furniture being moved across a floor – or a deep, anguished scream - came echoing from the level below them. The colour began to drain from his face.

'It's an old house,' reassured Syd, forcing a smile. 'And, remember, last time we went into a gangster's basement, what we found was an attractive blonde with a crush on Nigel Bailey!'

'Yeah,' sighed Nigel, 'and my affair with Lori lasted all of…oh, five minutes! Besides, if memory serves, we also found the world's earliest remote control machine gun, and the son of a corrupt police chief and his henchmen who tried to gas us to death! But apart from that…'

'…it was blast!' Sydney wiggled her eyebrows, her eyes laughing. 'Relax, Nigel! Really, there's nobody here but us, and I sure as hell have no intention of getting shot at, gassed, or anything bad, before I burn that turkey that I've got sitting in my fridge – and that I spend half a years wages on!' She giggled loudly, not quite drowning out a clap of thunder. 'Okay, let's find the way down.'

IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII

'Sydney, look at this!' called Nigel. 'There's a descending staircase behind this door – and it looks like it's been bricked up at some time.'

'That's weird,' observed Sydney, shining her torch on the pile of broken – but relatively shiny and modern-looking bricks that littered the top few steps. 'This must have been blocked up since Hostler lived here.'

'Maybe the police bricked up the basement after the, um, crimes had taken place?'

'Or maybe the police were the ones who unblocked it…you'd better take care climbing over them.'

'You mean we're going down?'

'You bet.'

They both felt increasingly uneasy as Sydney let the way down, the narrow, wooden staircase. 'So…um,' ventured Nigel, 'these murders that took place in the house. Do you know anything about them…about how they found the bodies, that sort of thing?'

'You sure you want to know?' asked Sydney, as she alighted onto the stone-flagged floor of an apparently empty basement.

'Yes, I do,' retorted Nigel – this was only half the truth, but any other answer seemed cowardly, and he was morbidly curious. 'You don't have to protect me - I can handle it.'

'Okay then. The bodies were discovered in the months after Christmas, each lying unburied on the grass in front of the house. Apparently, they had all been starved to death - then their rotting hearts had been gouged out, and were never found.'

'Oh!' Nigel raised the back of his hand to his lips, suddenly feeling rather ill. 'Oh…um…and do you think there is any chance that those poor buggers starved when they were bricked in a basement? Oh…God…maybe, I really didn't want to know that!'

'You asked!' retorted Syd, as she scanned the basement carefully, with its dusty piles of chairs, rat-chewed cardboard boxes, and piles of chipped and stained pottery. 'Nothing too out of the ordinary here,' she murmured. 'Nothing says gangster – or India.'

'…or murder!'

'No. Maybe we should rummage in some of these boxes.'

'If we must!' Nigel, still grumbling, made his way towards a large, not-too-incriminating looking tea-chest. He never quite made it though – instead, he stubbed his toe on something, and found himself hopping up and down in pain, clutching his foot.

'Ow!!! What the…'

Sydney was at his side in an instant, providing Nigel with a shoulder to steady himself on, but shining her torch intently at the floor. Carved on the stone slab were eight round niches, about the size of large coins. They were intersected with some long, indented lines. At either end was a larger, round niche.

'Does that look familiar to you?' she breathed.

Nigel, intrigue over-riding his painful toe, knelt down to examine the patterns closer, pulling his glasses out of a pocket on the inside of his coat and popping them on his nose. 'It looks to me like an Ancient Indian game-board…like those which are often found carved into temple floors. It could be a variant of Conclak. Um, what's it doing here, Syd?'

'I have no idea - but I really want to find out!' Syd was now crouching down beside him. 'Have you any idea how you play it?'

Nigel frowned, dredging his knowledge of ancient Indian game-play from the recesses of his mind. 'The rules are quite simple – you have seven little shells, or grains of wheat, in each hole. Then whoever goes first, um, scoops the shells out of one hole and drops one into each shell going round the board, in an attempt to get to their storehouse – the large hole at the end. It sort of carries on like that, and whoever has the most shells in their storehouse at the end, wins.'

'Simple?' laughed Syd. 'I guess it is once you play it! It's a shame we don't have any pieces. I wonder if it triggers something?'

Nigel shivered; the storm was still brewing and the whole house above them seemed to shake as it was smashed by a particularly strong gust of wind. 'Do we really want to trigger something in this place? It could be a death-trap!'

'It could be – but I can handle that! We want to find the scroll and get out of here right?'

Nigel exhaled heavily: 'Yeah, right…well, we'd better find something to play with!'

IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII

In the end, Nigel tore up the pages of a notebook he'd got stuffed in his pocket, and they piled the pieces into the holes.

'Surely this won't trigger anything?' he wondered out loud. 'The paper will be too light for any delicate mechanism to sense.'

'So you want to go outside and gather some pebbles?' teased Syd.

Nigel pulled a face: 'I wouldn't mind getting out of this house for good, actually, but getting soaking wet again and coming back? NO thanks!'

'Well then, let's play! Hmmm, it's a shame we don't have some music, a bottle of wine…'

'and a meal!' interjected Nigel. 'I'd choose that over more nauseating Christmas music any day! Err, what's the time?'

Syd glanced at her watch: 'Nearly 7pm.'

'We really should have brought that takeaway!' bemoaned Nigel. He finished arranging the pieces of paper in the holes. 'Okay, let's play. Do you want to go first?'

'No, you'd better. You know what you're doing better than me.'

'That's a first!' Nigel grinned; it was a modest, confidential smile that glowed in his light, hazel eyes. Even though his face was eerily lit from below by torchlight, it filled her with a warmth that quashed the feel of the chill air and the dampness of her clothes.

'Don't be silly.' She reached out and squeezed his hand as he reached to take the first playing pieces out of one the niches. 'There's been so many times when I'd never have survived of you hadn't been there. We're a team - I can't do without you!'

'Now you're being silly!' It was a light-hearted retort, but he pulled his fingers away, slightly embarrassed.

'Okay, off you go,' beamed Sydney, trying to maintain the mood. 'You sure you don't want me to sing Christmas songs?'

She got the reward she was looking for; an endearing, cheeky smile. 'You are joking, Syd? The screeching wind is bad enough…'

Very carefully, Nigel dropped his first piece of paper into the next niche. It was at that instant that the lights flew on.

Both Nigel and Sydney looked up in alarm. Sydney had noticed the ancient gas-lamps on the wall, but it had scarce been worth trying to light them. Now each was flooding the basement with waves of flickering light. And, standing on the bottom step of the stair, and pointing a large Tommy-gun at them, was a sharp-suited, round-faced middle-aged man in a bowler hat.

'Alfred Hostler!' gasped Sydney.

'It can't be!' stuttered Nigel, blinking hard and hoping to hell he was hallucinating.

'Oh, but it is!' drawled the gangster. 'And lookin' good for 126 years of age, don't ya think?'

'Nah, I would say that,' quipped Sydney, rising very slowly, even as Hostler trained the gun on her. The relic hunter knew she had to get it off of him, but he was too far to be reached with a flying kick – she desperately needed a distraction, or something to throw.

'You still look like an ugly piece of work to me!' Syd's fingers edged towards a tottering pile of crockery.

The gangster bit back quickly. 'Your pretty, poutin' lips are gonna be sayin' much sweeter things to me soon, Tulip!'

Then everything happened at once. Sydney grabbed the plate and hurled it, Frisbee-style, at the gun. It struck Hostler's arm, even as he fired. The bullet ricocheted off the ceiling, and struck Nigel below the shoulder. He cried out in shock, crucially distracting Sydney's follow-up blow and giving the gangster a chance to cast aside the gun, pull an aging yellowing scroll from his sleeve and read two simple lines. Nigel recognised them, even if they were in an unfamiliar, early Indian dialect: 'Her body is mine; her soul is cast away.'

Sydney, her hand reaching to snatch the scroll, instantly crumpled to the floor.

'No!' Nigel, forgetting the scratch made by the bullet, launched himself towards her, scooping her head and shoulders into his lap. Even as the gangster and the gun stepped closer, he frantically searched for a pulse. He couldn't find it… but it had to be there! Sydney wouldn't die – not like this. She couldn't!

It was only when the man was looming right over him that Nigel looked up. He was trembling with shock; his insides felt sick and tight with the unbearable intensity of his emotion.

'What have you done to her…you bastard! You unspeakable bastard…I'll…I'll…'

'She's gone,' cackled Hostler. 'And you're going to join her!'

'She can't be dead!' yelled Nigel, barely registering the threat on his own life as he frantically squeezed Sydney's limp wrist. There was no pulse. 'What did you say? Give me the scroll…I'll bring her back…I'll…I'll…'

Nigel gasped as he felt the cold barrel of the Tommy-Gun press into his temple.

'You won't be doing anything but dyin', boy? Now kiss ya pretty lady goodbye!'

Nigel stared, almost vacantly, at the man; feeling the gun ease away a little, he glanced down at Sydney. Her olive skin had already faded a little; her plush, shiny lips had somehow diminished and paled. The realisation hit him harder than any bullet, and instantly sucked from him any will to fight: whatever had just happened, Sydney was no longer there. Her spirit, her vibrancy and the awesome determination to live - and to live well - that had meant so much to him, had deserted this suddenly fragile shell.

But she was still beautiful.

Tears pricked in Nigel's eyes as he leant down and brushed his lips over hers. They were warm still; luxuriantly smooth, and slightly moist. But no breath escaped. She was gone, quite gone.

'Goodbye Sydney,' he whispered. Then, as if in a dream, he added. 'I love you…and there's still nobody else I'd rather be with tonight…'

Then the gun smashed down over the back of his head and everything went black.

Hostler laughed very loudly, drowning out even the thunder and lightening that splintered around the tumbledown mansion. Without much effort, he pulled Nigel's body off Sydney's. The young man was still alive, he could tell that, but that wasn't really a concern. It was the lovely lady that mattered.

'At last,' he sighed. 'A body that can do my Marjorie justice – a form that suits my darling, my little Tulip!'

Even as he lifted her lifeless form over his shoulder, however, a first hurtled towards his face. Unfortunately, it shot right through and out the other side, nearly sending its owner tumbling forward.

Sydney gawped angrily at her oddly see-through hand, and then, with a much greater pang of worry, at Nigel's prostrate form. Then, amidst her confusion, she suddenly realised who the dark-haired female figure being carried from the basement was.

'That's me!' she cried out loud. Nobody heard her, but the truth dawned on her quickly now: 'I'm a goddamn ghost!'

Sydney gritted her spectral teeth and clenched her translucent fists: 'I'm going to get you for this, Hostler, if I have to raise the dead myself…well, uh, raise myself, I guess!'

However, even though Hostler had now vanished, Sydney did not immediately go after him. Her attention was snatched by Nigel, who she now realised was quite unconscious. A thin trickle of blood seeped from the back of his head.

How on earth – or on whatever realm she now existed – was she going to help him?

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