The photograph arrived at 2:13 on a Tuesday morning. Perry Martin knew that because six months later he would still be able to tell you the exact time without looking.
2:13 a.m.
There was nothing remarkable about the email. No subject line. No message. No breathless explanation about government cover-ups or portals to Hell. No request that he ‘please investigate this before THEY remove it from the internet’. Just an attachment.
IMG_4481.jpg
Perry nearly deleted it. People sent him shit – that was an unavoidable consequence of spending twenty-three years writing for newspapers, fourteen of those at the Mercury, and the last three watching what remained of local journalism being slowly strangled by advertising revenue, Facebook groups and people who thought a screenshot constituted evidence. He’d had photographs of UFOs that were streetlights. Black panthers that were wheelie bins. A ghost monk that turned out to be a woman carrying a Tesco bag. Once, memorably, somebody had sent him a photograph of what they claimed was a human finger discovered inside a Greggs sausage roll. It was a chip.
Perry opened the attachment. The photograph showed Bellweather House. He recognised it immediately. Everybody in town did. It stood behind rusted railings at the top of Calder Street, where the respectable terraces petered out into old factories, lock-ups and waste ground.
A Victorian monstrosity of blackened stone and boarded windows, Bellweather had been empty since the council closed the children’s home there in 1997. There had been plans. There were always plans. Flats. A hotel. Luxury apartments. Demolition. Restoration. A community arts centre that existed for approximately nine months in the imagination of a councillor before disappearing after an election. Nothing happened. Bellweather simply remained.
The photograph had been taken from across the street on Winter. Late afternoon. Bare trees. Wet pavement. The house squatted behind its railings beneath a sky the colour of dirty dishwater. And there was a woman standing on the roof.
Perry enlarged it.
She stood behind the parapet. White dress. Long dark hair. Face turned towards the camera. He enlarged it again. Pixelated. He leaned closer. Something was wrong with her face. Not frightening, just wrong. Too pale. Too smooth. And her arms seemed extraordinarily long. Perry sighed.
“Fuck’s sake.”
He closed the email and went to bed.
At nine the following morning, he opened it again. His editor liked it. Of course she did.
“Local legend. Haunted children’s home. Mysterious woman on roof. It’s perfect.”
“It’s fake.”
“Probably.”
“It’s definitely fake.”
“Even better.”
Perry stared at her. Ruth stared back. She was thirty-one, permanently caffeinated and had inherited an eight-person newsroom that had once employed forty-six.
“Don’t give me that look.”
“What look?”
“The Woodward and Bernstein look.”
“I don’t have a Woodward and Bernstein look.”
“You absolutely do.”
“Some prick’s photoshopped a woman onto Bellweather.”
“Then find the prick.”
“That’s journalism now?”
“No. Journalism now is rewriting police Facebook posts and explaining why the bins haven’t been collected. This might actually be fun.” She grinned.
“Go and find your ghost.”
The story was online by lunchtime. Perry kept it deliberately sceptical.
MYSTERY WOMAN SPOTTED AT ABANDONED BELLWEATHER HOUSE
He explained the history of the building. He explained that nobody should trespass. He explained that the photograph was unverified and could easily have been manipulated. Then he included the photograph.
That was the mistake.
By six o’clock, forty-three thousand people had seen it. By midnight, somebody had enhanced it. The enhanced version was much better than the original. Unfortunately, it was also complete bollocks. The woman’s face had acquired black eyes and an open mouth. Somebody circled her hands.
COUNT THE FINGERS.
Someone else brightened the windows. There was apparently another figure inside. Then another. By Wednesday morning, there were seven.
By Wednesday afternoon, somebody had found an article from 1963 about a twelve-year-old girl who had run away from Bellweather Children’s Home. Her name was Elsie Crane. The internet decided the woman on the roof was Elsie. Perry pointed out that Elsie Crane had been found two days later at her aunt’s house in Huddersfield. Nobody cared. A TikTok video titled –
THE TERRIFYING TRUTH ABOUT BELLWEATHER HOUSE
– received 1.8 million views. The terrifying truth included three murders that had never happened, a satanic ritual in 1974 and the claim that fourteen children had disappeared from the home. Perry spent Thursday demonstrating that none of this was true. His article received 3,700 views. The TikTok reached 2.6 million.
By Friday, people were leaving flowers outside Bellweather House. For Elsie. Who had died in Spain in 2018, aged sixty-seven. Perry found her obituary. He posted it. Someone commented:
‘That’s what they want you to believe.’
Perry switched off his computer.
The confession arrived the following Monday. This email had a subject.
IT WAS ME. SORRY.
The sender was called Callum Price. Twenty-six. Worked at Kwik Fit. Lived with his girlfriend and a Staffordshire bull terrier called Pablo. Perry met him in the Black Swan. Callum looked terrified.
“I didn’t think it’d do this.”
Perry put his recorder between them.
“Do what?”
“All this.” He gestured vaguely towards the window. There were six people outside wearing Bellweather House T-shirts. The pub had started selling a cocktail called The Elsie. It was blue.
“I made the picture,” Callum said.
“Why?”
“Mate dared me.”
“That’s it?”
Callum shrugged miserably.
“We were pissed.”
Perry closed his eyes. Of course they were.
“Show me.”
Callum opened his laptop. He had everything. Original photograph. Editing files. Layers. Downloads. The woman came from a photograph of his girlfriend at Whitby Abbey. He’d stretched her arms. Removed her face. Changed the dress. Adjusted the shadows. Added grain. Perry watched him rebuild the ghost. It took four minutes.
“There.” Callum looked relieved.
“That’s everything.”
Perry stared at the screen.
“Send me the files.”
The Mercury published the confession.
BELLWEATHER GHOST EXPOSED AS HOAX
Callum explained exactly what he’d done. They included screenshots. The original photograph. The source image. The editing layers. Everything.
Nobody believed him.
That surprised Daniel. Not everyone, obviously. Plenty laughed. Some were disappointed. But the true believers simply absorbed Callum into the conspiracy. He had been paid. Threatened. The council wanted Bellweather redeveloped. Developers wanted the story suppressed. Callum wasn’t even Callum. His girlfriend didn’t exist. Someone found her Instagram account and decided it was fake. Someone found Perry’s home address. Someone posted a photograph of his car.
Ruth called the police.
Perry stopped reading the comments.
And that should have been the end of it.
Callum rang him at 11:38 on Thursday night.
“There’s something wrong with the picture.”
Perry was in bed.
“There are several things wrong with the picture.”
“No.” Callum sounded sober. Very sober.
“The original.”
Perry sat up.
“What about it?”
“I didn’t put him there.”
Perry felt something small and unpleasant move in his stomach.
“Put who where?”
“The window.”
They met at the newspaper office. Ruth had gone home. Rain rattled against the glass. Callum opened the original photograph. Not the edited one. The untouched file straight from his phone. Bellweather House. Empty roof. Bare trees. Wet road. Nothing remarkable.
“Third floor,” Callum said.
Perry zoomed. Boarded windows. Broken gutter. Brick.
“Left.”
He moved across.
“Down.”
And there it was. A face. Not the grotesque black-eyed thing created by the internet. Just a face. Behind a cracked pane of glass. Watching Callum take the photograph. Perry sat back.
“Could be anything.”
“Yeah.”
“Reflection.”
“Yeah.”
“Damage to the glass.”
“Yeah.”
Neither of them moved. Perry enlarged it. The resolution collapsed but the face remained. Pale forehead. Eyes. Nose. Mouth.
“Did you go inside?” Callum didn’t answer.
“Callum.”
“We wanted some pictures.”
“For fuck’s sake.”
“It was daytime.”
“That famously prevents accidents in derelict buildings.”
“We only went downstairs.”
“We?”
“Me and Gaz.”
“Who’s Gaz?”
“My mate.”
“The dare?”
“Yeah.”
Perry looked again at the face.
“Did you see anyone?”
“No.”
“Hear anything?” Callum rubbed his hands against his jeans.
“No.”
That meant yes.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“Callum.” He swallowed.
“We thought there was somebody upstairs.”
Perry waited.
“Footsteps?”
“No.”
“What, then?”
“Breathing.”
Perry almost laughed. Almost.
“Breathing?”
“Like someone had run a long way.” Callum demonstrated. Three short breaths. Then one long one. Three short. One long. Perry stared at him.
“Probably a bird.”
“Yeah.”
“You’ve got pigeons in there. Rats. Pipes. Wind.”
“Yeah.”
“Stop saying yeah.” Callum looked towards the darkened office windows.
“Gaz went back.”
Perry stopped.
“When?”
“Tuesday.”
“Why?”
“To film it.”
“Of course he fucking did.”
“He hasn’t come home.”
The police had already spoken to Gaz’s mother. Twenty-seven-year-old Gareth Millward had been missing for forty-eight hours. His car was found two streets from Bellweather House. His phone was off. The police had searched the building. Nothing. Perry spoke to the officer in charge. Nothing. He spoke to Gaz’s mother. Nothing. He spoke to Callum again. Nothing.
Then Gaz’s phone came online. For eleven seconds. Inside Bellweather House.
Perry didn’t go in because he was brave. He went because he’d spent twenty-three years believing that if something happened, somebody ought to witness it properly. He told Ruth where he was. He called the police. he waited.
For approximately four minutes. After which he called himself a fucking idiot and climbed through the same broken basement window Callum and Gaz had used.
The smell hit him first. Damp. Mould. Rotting plaster. Pigeon shit.
Something else.
Something sweet.
The corridor beyond his torch was narrow. Paint peeled from the walls in long strips. Doors stood open. A child’s mural survived beneath the decay. A yellow sun. Green hills. Stick people holding hands. Someone had scratched their faces away.
Perry stepped over a dead pigeon.
“Gaz?”
Nothing.
“Gaz!”
Three short breaths. One long.
Perry froze. It came from upstairs. He considered leaving. Every sensible part of his brain told him to leave.
Then someone screamed.
Not theatrically. Not like horror films. It was a man’s voice making a sound no adult human being should ever make.
Perry ran towards it. Up one flight. Then another.
“GAZ!”
The screaming stopped.
Perry reached the third floor. His torch shook. Doors. Corridor. Blackness…
Three short breaths. One long…
Behind him.
Perry turned. Nothing.
Then his torch found the blood. Not much. A smear along the skirting board. Another on the floor. A handprint…
Then another.
They continued towards a doorway.
Perry followed. Because sometimes intelligence and behaviour have absolutely no relationship with each other.
The room had once been a dormitory. Iron bedframes remained against the walls. Gaz lay between them. Alive. Barely. His clothes had been removed. His wrists were tied behind him with electrical cable. His mouth had been packed with strips of filthy curtain. somebody had cut words into his chest.
Perry stared. Not words. Letters. Repeated. Again and again.
L I A R LIAR. LIAR. LIAR.
Some were shallow. Some weren’t.
Gaz’s eyes opened. Perry dropped beside him.
“Jesus Christ.”
Gaz began convulsing.
“I’m getting you out.”
Perry pulled the curtain from his mouth. Gaz vomited blood. Then he whispered:
“Don’t.”
Perry stopped.
“Don’t what?”
Gaz’s eyes moved past him towards the ceiling.
“Don’t say you saw him.”
Something shifted above them. Perry looked up.
There was a person on the ceiling. For perhaps half a second his brain refused to understand what he was seeing. A naked man. Very thin. Arms spread. Fingers hooked into cracks in the plaster. Feet flattened against the ceiling. Upside down. Watching them.
Then he smiled. His gums were black.
Perry screamed.
The thing dropped.
Police found Perry outside Bellweather House at 1:07 in the morning. He had fallen through a ground-floor window. Thirty-seven stitches. Broken wrist. Two fractured ribs.
Gaz survived. Just.
The police found the room. They found the blood. The cable. The curtain.
They found fingerprints belonging to neither Gaz nor Perry. They found human faeces in several rooms. Food wrappers. Old clothes. Candles. Knives.
Hundreds of newspaper cuttings.
Most were about Bellweather. Some went back decades. There were photographs too. People walking past the house. Children. Couples. Dog walkers. Police officers.
Callum.
Gaz.
Perry.
One photograph had been taken through Perry’s kitchen window.
The police never found whoever had lived there. They searched Bellweather for three days. Dogs. Thermal cameras. Every room. Every cupboard. Every roof space.
Nothing.
But Perry had his photograph.
He hadn’t remembered taking it. His phone had.
Timestamp:12:46 a.m. Third-floor dormitory. Gaz on the floor. And behind him, caught perfectly in the flash, stood a naked man. Too thin. Filthy. Skin covered in scars. His head was tilted almost horizontally.
And he was smiling.
Perry stared at the photograph for a very long time. Then he did what journalists do.
He published it.
Not immediately. He checked first. Metadata. Original file. Police statement. Hospital records. Everything.
Ruth argued with him. Then she agreed. They published at 7:00 p.m.
THE MAN INSIDE BELLWEATHER HOUSE
Perry wrote every word himself. No speculation. No ghosts. No monsters. Just what had happened.
The photograph sat beneath the headline.
For twelve minutes, nobody commented.
Perry watched the counter climb.
1,000 views.
4,000.
11,000.
Then the first comment appeared.
LOL. Fake.
The second:
Photoshop is getting ridiculous.
Third:
AI. Look at the hands.
Perry stared at the screen.
Another.
This paper is desperate. 😂
Another.
Didn’t you lot literally just admit the last picture was fake?
Then:
FAAAAAAKE
And:
My 8yo could do better AI than this.
Hundreds followed. Nobody believed him.
By midnight, the photograph had become a meme. Someone put the man in Tesco. Someone put him behind the King. Someone put him on the moon. Someone animated him dancing. Perry watched the thing that had nearly killed him become funny.
At 2:09 a.m., he closed the laptop. His flat was silent. He poured whisky.
His hands still shook occasionally. Doctors said that would pass.
He drank.Outside, rain ticked softly against the glass. Perrylooked towards the window.
Nothing.
He laughed. A horrible little involuntary noise.
“Get a fucking grip.”
He finished the whisky. Went upstairs. Checked the locks. Checked them again. Got into bed.
At 2:13 a.m., his phone vibrated.
Email.
No subject.
No message.
One attachment.
IMG_4482.jpg
Perry stopped breathing.
He opened it.
It was a photograph of his bedroom. Taken from the doorway. He was asleep in bed. The timestamp was from the previous night.
Perry stared at himself.
Then at the dark space beneath the bed.
Two pale hands curled around the wooden frame.
He dropped the phone.
Something underneath him breathed.
Three short breaths.
One long.
Then the mattress slowly lifted.
