The Cursed Hill (Rick Thane Series Book 1)

Chapter 1 Client #23

The new double-glazed windows were tapped lightly with the typical October rain. Standing up from my desk that was littered with academic books on Psychology, I noticed a fog was starting to creep in from the docks. "Another miserable day in London." It was Saturday, the 17th of October, 1998, a start of a new semester of my last year at Kings College, London. Slumping in my chair, I spun around a full circle and noticed a familiar face staring at me from the bottom of my bed.

"Morning." I stifled a yawn and scratched my shaggy brown hair. It needed a cut.

"Did you sleep well?" Edgar asked. He straightened his ripped, green military uniform unnecessarily. "You need to tell me these things. I get bored all too easy."

Picking up a pen, I was about to open one of my books and start studying when my stomach gave a growl. "Damn, I'm hungry." Heading for my door, Edgar shook his head.

"Do you Yanks always feel hungry?"

I scowled. "It's not like I'm fat! Besides, I haven't had breakfast. It is a staple part of, you know, living! You should remember."

I took hold of the cold, brass handle. "Er, I wouldn't go down there if I were you. It resembles a bomb site. And I would know I did die in one." He vanished into thin air. Seeing the dead was commonplace for me, and so far as I knew, it was only me. I could not only see them, but I could also hear them too. Apparently, that in itself was unusual.

Ignoring him, I walked out into the hallway. Both of my roommate's doors were closed, but my nose wrinkled at the faint smell of smoke, beer and fart.

The three of us lived in a converted Victorian house just on the outskirts of Hackney. I was still getting used to their accents, Liverpudlian and Mancunian, but I wasn't getting used to living with such messy people. When I arrived downstairs, what seemed to be classed as a "bomb site" by Edgar in the living room was exactly that. Potato chips were crushed into the cheap, grey carpet; empty beer cans were full of old cig butts, though the ashtrays were suspiciously clean. Magazine pages were balled up and ended up in various places around the room, including one ball ending up wedged in the TV aerial. The sofa cushions, along with the washing line pole, several clothes pegs and what seemed to be a bed sheet, became a fort in the middle of the room. I was not surprised. They were completely pissed the night before. The smell had put me off food, and all I wanted now was a cup of coffee.

The kitchen didn't fare much better. The tower of plates resembled something like the teetering Tower of Pisa. McDonald's bags and French-fry cartons were smashed on the floor, clearly their choice of food last night. And the entire content of a new bottle of washing-up liquid was emptied and squirted on the floor with slip marks showing the boys trying to walk across the lino. "What the hell..." During the night, however, someone had decided to drink the last four pints of milk, and I was stupid enough not to buy any powered milk as a backup.

Although my housemates were messy, young, a tad ignorant and quite probably hung-over at least six days of the week, they were alright, and they didn't interrupt my work.

"I'm going out for milk!" I called up the stairs. "Please try and clean this shit up before I get back!" There came no reply from anyone; they were probably both comatose.

Edgar appeared just by the front door. "My dear boy, they didn't go to bed until four in the morning. They won't be able to hear you until this afternoon when they drag their arses out of bed or-" he paused in thought, "fall out of bed."

"What's with the fort?" I thumbed the living room.

He shrugged. "How should I know about modern drunken louts? Besides, you know what today is, don't you?"