The Crows

1:3 [The Creepy Old House]

As the mercurial might of April assaulted the house, Carrie made everyone a round of teas and coffees, amused that the older men finishing up in the kitchen were dragging it out – normally, they couldn't wait to leave. Fred and Roy were the competent counterparts of Laurel and Hardy, and their apprentice Marty was a fresh-faced lad not long out of school. Fred called him "McFly," but Marty, to both Fred and Carrie's horror, didn't get the reference.

"How long has this clock been like that?" Marty demanded, finally noticing Carrie's joke from a week ago. The rescued grandfather clock didn't work, so she'd stuck the hands at two minutes to twelve in honour of his favourite Iron Maiden song after hearing it so often it had turned into an earworm. Marty refused to work in the house in silence. Too many noises sounded like whispers.

"Took him long enough," Roy remarked, grinning at his apprentice and accepting his tea with calloused hands. "Who had the last day on the job?"

"Fred did," Carrie said, the keeper of the sweepstake. "You owe him a pint."

Marty took this in good humour. "Who did that?"

Carrie slid by with two more mugs, her smirk giving her away.

The apprentice shook his head. "Give over, Carrie. Roy's been leading you astray."

"He wouldn't dare, I'd tell his wife," Carrie retorted, as Roy feigned a cuff across Marty's head. She left them to it and went to find the master carpenter finishing up his last job.

Joe Lin was hanging a reclaimed chapel door to seal off the attic stairs. He gave her a thumbs-up as she approached with two mugs and accepted his with a grateful smile.

"Nearly done! Be out of your hair for good after this. What'll you do then? Sell it on?"

Carrie bit back the urge to ask if he'd been speaking to her mother. She shook her head. "I thought I'd stay."

"You sure? This house, it..." Joe shook his head with an awkward smile. "It... changes people. I mean, that's what they say."

"Change is good," Carrie remarked, thinking that anything would be better than her current situation.

"No more sleeping in the crypt for you, anyway!" Joe laughed, sipping his Earl Grey. "Keep the hard-hat. Souvenir."

Carrie allowed herself a smile. "Thanks." She paused, sorry to see them go. It had taken her weeks to get into the swing of the on-site banter, and after getting to know them all a bit better, only Joe lived locally. The rest of them were subcontracted from Bexhill and she was unlikely to bump into them again. "I don't suppose you'll be sorry to see the back of us." The 'us' slipped out before Carrie could stop herself. Joe looked at her strangely for a moment, but then his eyes slid back to the door and he gave the frame a pat as if to say he knew what she meant.

"Had a devil of a job getting locals to work on it," he admitted, scratching his head. "This stretch of road has... a bit of a reputation." He gave a short, awkward laugh. "The Bermuda Triangle of Sussex, they call it."

"Yeah, the plumber said something like that. Why?"

"Oh, it's... It's just what they say." He didn't elaborate further on who 'they' were, so Carrie assumed general folk-knowledge. "Drivers go missing, they don't find the car, nothing. They say a lot of shit like that around here. They say The Crows is cursed, have you heard that?" He rolled his eyes, but there was a hint of uncertainty in them. "Bet you've heard all the stories by now, hey?"

Carrie didn't answer. Since moving to Pagham-on-Sea, she had heard it everywhere. Locals clammed up around her with an almost guilty silence, and while most young professionals lived in the commuter's estate the other side of town, even they only knew the place as 'that creepy old ruin'. Carrie hated that the most; the mix of the dismissive and the ghoulish, and the way they looked at her afterwards, like an unwrapped mummy displayed for their amusement.