The Powerhouse

by Gwyneth Jones, Ann Halam

Genres: Horror

Synopsis

Robs Hayward is a loner, a nobody. But when she plays the piano, she shines.

Cool kids Maddy and Jef ask her to join their band and she is giddy. They're cool! They're two years older than her! It's a dream come true! Except for the part where their rehearsal space gets turned into a car park. Determined not to lose the first chance at being cool she's ever had, Robs suggests the mysterious, derelict industrial building. The one in the Wild Park.

The one she's afraid is haunted.

But the Council have repurposed it, and they share the space with the slightly eccentric Artist in Residence, and actually, everything is fine! Except for Maddy becoming obsessed with the murder mystery linked to the building.

And a seance is suggested.

And the ghost of a child that Robs sees out of the corner of her eye promises something more supernatural at play . . .

The Powerhouse is another chilling teen ghost story by award-winning author Gwyneth Jones, writing as Ann Halam. You can find more information on the writing Gwyneth did as Ann Halam on her website:http://www.gwynethjones.uk/HALAM.htm

Release date: August 23, 2022

Publisher: Orion

Print pages: 240

Sample

It was one of the last days of the Christmas holiday. I was in the Wild Park with my little brother and his two best friends: Tom and Nick Campbell from next door. A whole gang of us had been tobogganing, but there’d hardly been enough snow. What was left, after a week of relentless punishment, had been gouged and ground up by boots and runners until it was just half-frozen mud. The slope down to the goldfish pond in the park, where we always did our tobogganing, looked like a rugby pitch with a pinball-machine tilt: horribly littered with torn cardboard, lost gloves; scraps of bin-bag plastic. To tell the truth, most thirteen-year-old girls don’t mix well with little boys, and my so-called friends had not been a great help with the babysitting. I’d been quite glad when Stef, Maeve and Dee Dee and the rest of them had headed off in search of hot drinks, safety from crazed infants with snowballs in their mitts, and other civilised comforts.

The sky was still bright blue, it was only two o’clock. Jerry (that’s my brother) and I didn’t want to go home. We both liked Solange, our au-pair. But we’d become tired of her full-time company in the week or so since Christmas and New Year. She fussed, and although she was only nineteen she had delusions of being our Nanny.

On the other hand, I knew that if I had one more fistful of brown slush stuffed down my neck by the darling little boys, I was going to clock one of them really hard. So I said, “Let’s do something different. Let’s be Antarctic explorers”.

Nick liked that. He was young enough to have some imagination; something little boys lose all too soon. Tom and Jerry (they loved being Tom and Jerry, like the cat and mouse in the old cartoons) put up a protest. I wasn’t having any. I told them the tobogganing was impossible, which it was; and if they scraped the slope for any more slush balls they’d be ruining their chances of tobogganing tomorrow, even if it snowed all night. They were impressed by that. They think I possess ancient kid-lore about things like snow quality, because I’m older. I took the rope and marched off, dragging our sledge.

So naturally all three little boys piled onto it and started yelling “Mush! Mush!” the way you’re supposed to do to encourage husky dogs.

I dragged them over a large rut, and accidentally-on-purpose tipped them off. Then I took possession of the sled and made them drag me. They seemed to like being dogs. We spent a few happy minutes zigzagging to and fro along the foot of the slope, all of us yelling “Mush! Mush! But as I always find when I’m babysitting Jerry, minutes is as long as any peace lasts. They wanted to do something different. I said it was time to start exploring.

The part of the “Wild Park” that was really more or less wild was up behind the Pagoda Café, on the other side of the goldfish pond. The Café was shut up for the winter. The Pool was looking messy. There were coke cans floating in melted patches, and all kinds of dead leaves and miserable slimy stubs of vegetation sticking out of the ice around the edges. The boys wanted to try crossing it, hopping from floe to floe, but I wouldn’t let them. Sometimes I have attacks of Nanny-ness myself. We went on up the hill, into the wilderness tangle.

The park wasn’t far from the house where I’d lived all my life. I must have been taken there hundreds of times since I was old enough to be strapped into a buggy. I’d had my first adventures on the swings, the slide and the climbing frame in the playground down by the front entrance. I’d cried when they took away the old tubular helicopter, and the pink plastic elephant that you could climb inside; and replaced them with those “tasteful” giant wooden animals. I’d nagged for ices from the Pagoda Café, I’d been frightened by the wasps in the rubbish bins, I’d fallen in the pond as often as any other kid in town. I’d played hide and seek in the little wilderness, getting scratched by brambles. But I didn’t know what lay beyond.

Have you ever looked into a rock pool, and seen the live shellfish creeping about? That’s what I was like, a limpet on a rock. I crept a few inches one way: school. A few inches in other directions: the park, my friends’ houses, the local shopping centre; cinemas, music class; and I thought I knew the whole pool. I think most people are the same. They have a little track that they can’t see, that they run on every day and never go outside it. It would knock them over with shock just to take a different turning on the way to work.

We reached the boundary wall of the Wild Park and found a gap; and a path leading on into scrubby woodland. I climbed up on the wall, had a look around, and was amazed to see the big windows of my school winking in the sunlight, on the hillside up above the trees.

“This is North-West Passage,” I said. “We’re going to see if we can reach Montrose Road (the address of West Bradfield Comprehensive) by the unmapped, wilderness route.”

We tried to climb the hill. It wasn’t fun. People had been dumping rubbish under the trees, so you had to watch out for traps of rusty metal that lurked under the pretty white snow. Then Tom fell all the way down again, with the sledge on top of him. He wasn’t hurt, but he was depressed: his new Arsenal tracksuit trousers had taken a battering (Tom was keen on his clothes). We rubbed him down as best we could, and decided to try the path instead.

It looked as if no one used it much. The branches of the trees stooped over it, and tall weeds poked through the snow. It felt spooky. I speak with hindsight, but I really remember that afternoon: how cold the air was, how it tasted of smoke and frost. We were so near our familiar haunts, but we’d somehow slipped over into the unknown, into untrodden wastes beyond our knowledge … I was enjoying myself. Being with the little boys gave me an excuse to make-believe, without having to act like a proper, cynical teenager.

The path led us to an open space; and a strange building. It was an odd, chunky shape, built of orange brick. It had rows of tall, round-arched windows and a kind of domed roof. We stood in front of it, staring. I couldn’t imagine what it was supposed to be. It definitely wasn’t a house, or a block of flats. It had no identifying marks. It might have held a small, old-fashioned public swimming pool. Or maybe a library, or a hospital? It had that kind of pompous, self-important look. But it seemed to be derelict.

“What should we do?” whispered Tom.

As if the building could hear us; as if it posed a problem that we had to solve.

The ground around it, which showed black and crunchy cinder where the snow had melted, was surrounded by a high mesh fence. But at the back, where we’d come in, there was a big gap. In the front there were gates, standing open. A track from these gates led off towards the road by the Wild Park. Inside them stood some falling-down outbuildings and a dirty white caravan; tilted crazily forward with its blunt nose buried in a pile of broken bricks. The snow was mashed up by ruts and tyre marks. Maybe Travellers or tramps had been using the site. But there was no one about.

“Let’s see if we can get inside.” I said.

I didn’t think we’d be able to get in, but I was wrong. The big double doors were standing ajar, a padlock dangling from the rusty chain that had kept them locked.

“Wow!” breathed Jerry, peering inside. “WEIRD!”

I was expecting every moment to hear someone yell: Hey, what are you kids doing?

No one yelled. We were alone.

“What is it for?” demanded Jerry, whispering again.

What was inside the double doors wasn’t outstandingly weird. No monsters, no tortured corpses, no aliens from outer space. But it was genuinely strange. A single big room that went up to the domed roof; and a big wide stage at the far end, reached by a flight of stone stairs. The floor was concrete, scattered with all kinds of rubbish, including bits of defunct furniture. It wasn’t dark. We could see everything: lots of light came in through those arched windows. Up in the roof, under the dome, track ran from wall to wall. A huge metal hook dangled from a steel hawser, on a pulley wheel. On one side of the hall, to our right, there was a doorway without a door. We could just glimpse more rooms in there; and darkness.

“Is it something to do with electricity,” asked Jerry. “Somewhere to store electricity?”

“You can’t store electricity,’ I said. “It could be an old Powerhouse. That’s a place where they step down the voltage of the power that comes from the power station. It has to be stepped down, for domestic use.”

I’d done some project work on electricity at school; I suppose that was why the idea came to me. Or perhaps it was because the place felt as if it had power, even then. “If it’s a powerhouse,” I said, looking round, “There ought to be some great big transformers—”

But Jerry had lost interest. My darling little brother was always asking me questions, the way bright, curious children are supposed to show their intelligence: and then never listening to what I had to say. I think it annoyed him that I always knew the answers (and if I didn’t, I made something up: essential big-sister self-defence). He and Tom and Nicky barged past me, raced across the big hall; and vanished into the darkness beyond that doorless doorway.

I found out, much later, that the building we called the Powerhouse had been a water pumping station; handling domestic supply. So my name was right in a way. But already, as I stood there, I didn’t want to know the everyday truth. It was a wonderful, spooky mystery. I wanted it to have been built by aliens; or by a strange secret government department for some purpose no one could ever discover. It was easy to imagine a Frankenstein’s laboratory in here. A big platform on scaffolding, cranked up under the dome; lightning bolts flashing down those steel cables. I wondered how long it had been standing empty. I was surprised that it wasn’t vandalised. There wasn’t even one broken window. Yet we obviously weren’t the first people to have explored its attractions. The walls were tiled in dirty white, to the height of my head, and covered in paintings. Not tagged, and not spray-painted, graffiti art, but definitely not from the industrial past.

I saw faded giant daisy flowers, clouds, a rayed sun. I kicked through the rubbish on the floor, and found strange remnants that looked like decayed stage props. A branch of a tree, made of chicken wire and painted papier-mâché; a length of stained purple velvet, a carousel horse without a head … I climbed the stone steps to the stage, holding a little toy windmill on a stick, the kind you used to be able to buy at the seaside. The sails were dust-crusted purple and yellow plastic. They wouldn’t move when I blew, the rivet that held them together was rusted stuck. I could hear the boys yelling somewhere in their dark maze; their voices raising flat, deadened echoes in the dome. The acoustic wasn’t very good. But you can do anything with sound, if you just mess around with the space a bit, and have the right machines. I was thinking how Maddy and Jef would love this place.

They were three years older than me, and in their last year at school. They’d been playing their special kind of rock music together for ages. Jef’s big brother John had been the leader: a technical wizard at putting electronic sound and visuals together. But he’d finished his course at Bradfield Art College now: moved to Manchester and formed a new band. Maddy and Jef had advertised for someone to join them, and they’d picked me. We called ourselves Hajetu, a techno-art music performance group. Hajetu was the first syllables of our three surnames: Jef Jeffries, Maddy Turner, Rob Hayward. We were using it until we thought of something better: but it seemed to work, and maybe we’d keep it. It sounded like a word in an unknown language, and that suited us. People could read different meanings into it.

I’d been with them since October, and those three months had been absolutely the happiest time of my life. My parents weren’t too pleased. They preferred me as a potential concert pianist: practising ten hours a day, and resting quietly with some homework in my spare time. They hated the whole idea of Hajetu. But I was in heaven. I loved the strange machines that translated sound into movement and colour: John’s prototypes, that he’d left behind for us, when he went off to the big city. I loved our intense rehearsals; I loved working out new ideas. Most of all, maybe, I just loved being with Maddy and Jef. Especially Maddy.

Jef, as was generally agreed by everyone who knew him, could be a pain. Maddy was always kind to me, she never made me feel like a kid, or a weird geek. I admired her so much; I couldn’t believe my luck at having her for an actual friend.

If you are what’s called “talented”, and it stands out enough to be noticed when you’re a child, you do not get much time to learn how to be normal. From before I was seven, whatever anyone else was doing, you could bet that I was playing the piano. Or the clarinet; my second instrument. Or I was writing music, or (later on) experimenting on my first electronic sampler. I’d blackmailed my parents into buying it for me. (It was easy. I said if you don’t, I’ll be so depressed I won’t be able to practise). But they were always willing to buy me things. It was a shame I didn’t want more “things”, really.

I’m not really complaining. I love my music, and I’m used to the daily grind. But it always made me different. I had friends my own age to hang out with, before I joined the band, but I never felt at home with them. I thought I was getting things wrong, I felt as if I was speaking a foreign language, and at any moment I might make some ridiculous, embarrassing mistake. With Maddy and Jef I could relax. They were older. I wasn’t supposed to understand them. I could just enjoy their company; and the music.

The only thing I didn’t enjoy about Hajetu was the performing. That might sound strange, but I was used to performing with a great big piano to hide behind; and in front of me only the examiner for a Grade exam, or a harmless audience of Mums and Dads, sitting n. . .