Haunt (audio story)

Bambera joins Rix on an excursion up north to investigate strange goings on at the abandoned Greensands Hotel. Are local legends true that the hotel is haunted by a murderous bogeyman known as Baghead, or is there a more down-to-earth explanation? The only way to uncover the truth is to stay in the hotel overnight, but their digging into the building's past has awoken something that would have been better left alone.

Plot

Rix takes Bambera to Greensands, Merseyside to visit The Dunes Hotel, which MP Malcolm Climber wanted to keep from being demolished before he disappeared. She shows Bambera to the basement where a construction man was attacked by a man with a bag on his head, whom he believed to be Climber, and plays a recording by an architect from a week later. Bambera is unimpressed, but agrees to investigate on the condition that Rix have Savarin complete her paperwork for a month.

Bambera and Rix stay at the hotel overnight without incident but, when Rix replays a recording, she hears a voice say "you will die" and a child cry. At the library, Rix listens to a recording about Baghead by Clare Yale, who went missing fifteen years ago, and is told by journalist Dom McNeil to read the microfilms on the Wells family. The Wellses owned the hotel from 1915, when it was briefly an army hospital; Graham Wells died in an asylum two months ago and his son, Alan, is in prison for murdering his mother.

Rix puts a UNIT trace on Clare Yale, who believed that Baghead was a "vessel for the lost", but Bambera believes that it is a hoax trying to shut down Lantern Constructions' development of The Dunes. Promised ice cream in addition to breakfast, Bambera goes with Rix to the asylum where Nurse Bannister shows them photographs of scratches on Graham allegedly caused by his son and tells them that Graham believed that his wife's ghost held his hand at night. This reminds Rix of various other stories of people who stayed at the hotel complaining about somebody holding their hand in the night.

After showing Bambera a recording of Clare Yale's séance, Rix tells her that she felt a hand holding hers whilst they were staying at The Dunes, which Bambera believes she imagined as a result of all the recordings she has watched and listened to. Bambera agrees to one last night and, in the morning, Rix checks the recording and they hear the voice of Blair, Bambera's army major whom she testified against and who died in Kenya, calling Bambera a traitor. McNeil, whom Bambera has learnt was given an official warning for harrassing Clare Yale weeks before her disappearance, is soon sent away when he arrives and tells them to ask Alan Wells how his mother died.

Having realised that it would be impossible for the body of Alan's mother to wash up on the beach given Greensands' tides, Bambera and Rix go to speak with Alan at Rex Hill Jail in North Yorkshire. He denies having harmed his father and explains that Baghead appeared to his mother as a drowned child to torture her and that she died soaking wet in the basement. Savarin calls them and lets them know that McNeil broke into The Dunes looking for them and has been attacked, suffering permanent damage to his arm, but will not speak to anybody but Rix. They return to The Dunes and find the windows smashed from the inside and their equipment covered in sand.

Bambera stays in The Dunes on her own, believing that Climber is in the building, whilst Rix stays in the Jeep with a radio. Savarin informs Rix that UNIT have learnt of another missing person: Clayton Winfield, whose disappearance at The Dunes resulted in a fight over his inheritance. Bambera hears the cries of Chikulu, a boy who was snatched from her village, and goes to investigate; Rix hurries in and finds Bambera screaming with bite marks on her hand. Rix wonders if it was caused by sleep deprivation and sends photographs to be compared with the wounds on Graham Wells. She tries to call the two people who were with Clare Yale during her séance, but John Talbot does not answer and Melanie Landau refuses to talk.

At the hospital, McNeil shows Bambera his bite and informs her that Clayton Winfield used to traffic drugs to the hotel for use in rituals before the Wellses owned it. He also insists that he is telling the truth and that he saw his father in the hotel when he was attacked. Later, Bambera is informed that some of the bites on Graham and McNeil were from Climber and that the others were likely canine. Rix agrees to give up and leave Greensands if they hold a séance like Clare Yale and get no results, speculating that Winfield awoke something with his experiments which has since been reawoken by Climber's actions to save the hotel and turned him into Baghead.

Bambera and Rix replicate Clare Yale's ritual. Baghead appears and throws Rix across the room. Bambera removes the bag and sees that it is Climber's reanimated corpse, manifesting as aspects of Bambera and Rix's past, but she says that she is not afraid of her past. Baghead is defeated and, when Bambera and Rix listen to the audio later with Savarin, they can hear only themselves. Lantern Constructions declare that nothing will be built on the site of The Dunes Hotel aside from a memorial garden and the entity beneath it is freed.

Cast

Worldbuilding

Rix and her family went on holidays to Blackpool when she was young.
Malcolm Climber, an MP, condemned Lantern Constructions' plans to demolish The Dunes Hotel and build flats.
The Dunes Hotel was built in 1862. It is a Grade II building.
Screw Loose is a song by the Allen Keys.
Dennis Riley is an operations manager.
Keith Osprey is an architect.
Graham Wells was in Clifton Banks Hospital, a psychiatric hospital.
Alan Wells was arrested for the murder of his mother, Shirley, and imprisoned in Rex Hill Jail in North Yorkshire. After this, ownership of The Dunes went to his uncle.
Dom McNeil presents Greensands Radio.
Arnold Bower was found dead in his room in 1976. He complained of somebody being in his room and holding his hand.
Carys Piller stayed at The Dunes with her mother in 1975. She left after only one night, saying that somebody had held her hand.
Clare lost a sister to pneumonia when she was thirteen.
Bambera quotes Jabberwocky.
Duncan Verger is an MP. He informs UNIT after McNeil is attacked.
In the Victorian era, The Dunes was called "Winfield Spa" and was owned by Clayton Winfield, who inspired Kellogg. Winfield used his pharmaceutical company and his connections to traffic drugs along the Lancashire Canal to the spa for use in rituals.

Notes

Haunt was influenced by The Stone Tape and The Case of Charles Dexter Ward. (BFX: Haunt)

Continuity

to be added

External links

Official Haunt page at bigfinish.com