Title: The No Good Building
Fandom: BBC Sherlock
Rating: PG
Length: 1692
Summary: John and Sherlock investigate a haunted house.
Author's Note: Also for the watsons_woes challenge "Anticipation"

“Brrr,” said John, tucking his hands as deep as they would go into his pockets. “I don’t know if she was mentally unhinged enough to murder her ex-husband, but she was right about one thing: this place is spooky.”

Sherlock looked up from rummaging through the kitchen bin, and gave him a flat look. “Spooky. Really, John? Already flexing your vocabulary in preparation for another romanticised blog entry?”

John flushed and looked away, but wherever his eyes fell, there was no getting around it. The place was a ridiculous cliché. It was an old decrepit manor with creaking floorboards, leaking roof, vast darkened hallways, spiderwebs hanging in ropes from the ceiling, and leaking taps dripping endlessly echoing in ancient pipes.

It was even a dark and stormy night. Rain lashed against the windowpanes, tree branches beat against the roof, and the wind whistled under the eaves like the moaning of a ghost with the lung capacity of an elephant. And the lights kept flickering; dipping for a fraction of a second, once, then going off for long enough to make you wonder whether you were in the dark for good—then once again casting their dim light over dusty rugs and gaping doorways leading into darkness.

“Spooky,” John said again, and Sherlock made a noise of disgust through his teeth.

He stared at the collection of tins and bottles and packets he’d pulled from the bin for a moment, and shook his head.  “Obvious,” he said, and strode back towards the entrance hall and up the grand staircase, letting John follow along in his wake. “Barely a six. But if you must be wholly ridiculous, then at least make yourself useful by searching this the first level while I check upstairs.”

“Split up?” demanded John. “Have you seen this place? Have you never seen a horror movie?”

Sherlock paused with his hand on the banister, foot poised on the bottom step of the second flight. “A what?”

“Oh, never mind,” grumbled John, waving him away. “When we get finished with this case, I’m making you watch The Shining.” And being finished this case was something John was definitely looking forward to. It was cold, even now they were inside out of the wind—mostly out of the wind, because this place appeared to be attempting to push the boundaries of ‘draughty’ towards ‘are there even walls?’ John had been soaked by the driving rain in the short dash into the house from the hire car, and every little breath of air sent a new chill down his spine.

It hadn’t seemed the right night for investigating a potentially haunted house. It hadn’t been the night for investigating anywhere except inside a mind palace, but Sherlock had been insistent that there was not a moment to waste, and that the truth of the case could be beyond reach if they loitered until the weather dried out.

Slowly, John worked his way down the hall, turning on as many lights as he could inside each room and searching inside cupboards, and drawers—for what, Sherlock hadn’t told him, just muttering ‘anything hidden’ in that obnoxious voice he used when he was setting John busy work to keep him out of the way while he looked for the evidence he wasn’t sure enough to explain yet.

At least the whistling had died down. Oh, the wind was still moaning under the eaves, through the little cracks in the creaking floorboards and chinks in the crumbling walls, but downstairs there had bene a fainter overtone to the noise, which had given John the uneasy feeling that it was in the room with him. Moving around. Perhaps following him.

The house continued to be creepy—clouds of dust rose from box after box of old scarves and hats and dolls in the cupboards, the colours of the draperies and upholstery muted by age and ingrained dust and dirty lightbulbs, piles of wood and reconstruction material left in abandoned heaps on the floor—but there was nothing more hidden than simply being stuffed in a drawer and forgotten.

Certainly nothing that might clarify why young Janet Dorling had arrived at Baker Street that morning in a terrible state—certain that she was about to be forced to commit a murder by the ghost of her abusive ex-husband.

John had given Sherlock a brief look of disbelieving consternation at her words, but the opening was apparently enough to pique the consulting detective’s interest, so he’d seated her in the client’s chair and John had pressed a much-needed mug of tea into her trembling hands. And then they’d listened to her story: the old-money estate willed to her by her hated ex-husband as a final apology for the way things had ended between them, the day she and her new fiancé had spent examining the decomposing old mansion and deciding that it wasn’t worth the disturbing unhappy memories or going to the trouble to even try finishing the repairs or cleaning up before they put it on the market to get what they could for it, the car trouble that had prevented them leaving that afternoon, the evening there during which shadows had moved on the walls, small objects had failed to remain where they’d been put, the meal they’d made out of muesli bars and a couple of water bottles they'd found in the kitchen cupboard.

And the next morning, Janet had woken up beside her fiance’s body with the letter-opener from the dresser in her hand and blood everywhere, the ghost of her husband standing over the scene and laughing, telling her that she would always be his, and that he would make her kill anyone who tried to take her away from him. The ghost had moved towards her threateningly…

And then she’d woken up again to find everything normal, her fiancé alive and still asleep, the bedsheets clean, the letter opener spotless—and still in her hand. She’d run, told her fiancé to stay away from her, told him she wasn’t safe, and she hadn’t stopped until she’d got to the police station where they’d laughed her out the door, and then she’d kept running until she reached Baker Street, where she’d hoped that at least Sherlock Holmes would believe the danger she posed and keep her fiancé safe from her.

Before they’d had the chance for questions, Lestrade and a sneering Donovan had arrived upstairs, with a warrant to take her in for questioning regarding a new parcel of evidence they’d received by mail.  It implicated her in setting the stable fire two months previously, that had killed and cremated her ex-husband Jonas Oldacre in one fell swoop. Janet had blanched and flinched at the mere mention of his name, turning in on herself and beginning to shake in a way that made John feel certain that if—and it was a strong possibility given her clearly unhinged mental state—if she had killed her ex-husband, the man had certainly deserved it.

At the sight of the woman’s distress, though, Sherlock had grasped her by the hands and bent to look her intensely in the eyes, as he promised her that they would find out the truth and make sure her fiancé was safe. Lestrade and Donovan boggled at the sight, and even John felt somewhat baffled and uncertain.

It was only after the police had left that Sherlock opened his hand, tossed the set of keys he’d pulled out of her handbag up and then snatched them out of the air again, giving John a smug wink.

Somehow, it always made John feel better when he discovered Sherlock’s ulterior motive for showing compassion to a victim or witness. Sherlock did feel compassion, John knew that, even if he’d never admit to that element of his motivation—but seeing him put on a sham of displaying it was always creepy. Creepier, almost, than the old manor house Sherlock had searched out the address for, and which thanks to Janet’s keys, a train trip, and a white-knuckled drive through the torrential rain, they’d ended up inside.

They were searching for… what, anything hidden? What did that even mean? How did one track down a potentially murderous ghost from the bad dream of a woman on the edge of a psychotic break? John opened another cupboard, this one seemingly full of ancient magic tricks, and haphazardly searched the contents: boxes with mirrors and holes with bent channels through which to thrust knives, dummies and puppets whose empty glass eyes sent John’s mind straight back into the realm of horror movies again.

The whistling sound had started up closer again now. John tensed, without moving or pausing in his careful search of the cupboard. Had that been footfalls on the floor behind him? The noise was close enough to make the hair on the back of his neck stand on end. The lights dipped, then dipped again.

John wasn’t superstitious. But there was something about this place. And there was something… something… someone…

Carefully, he moved the mirrored lid of the box he’d been opening to look behind himself, and saw…

“Sherlock!” he protested. He whirled around and punched Sherlock on the arm, hard enough to bruise, probably, but the other man deserved it. “Don’t do that, you arse.”

Sherlock gave one last mocking whistle through his teeth, before he gave up and started laughing. After a further second of outrage, John joined him.

“Come on, John,” said Sherlock, stifling his giggles. “The cupboard of magic tricks pretty much says it all, doesn’t it? He’s been living here in secret for months, stupid enough to still use the bin in the kitchen when he’s down there—and there’s a half-used packet of hypnotics, too, enough to spike their water, keep her suggestable and the fiancé asleep while he set the whole thing up and then dismantled it.”

“He… it was a trick?” asked John. “Revenge, to drive her over the edge?”

“Cleverly done. Maybe a seven,” said Sherlock, and letting one side of his mouth tick upwards. “The hallway upstairs is six feet shorter than the one down here, but the rooms are the same size. Ready to flush out the ghost of husbands past?”

“Ready,” said John, grinning back.

And then they were running.