Copyright 2025 Blackwych Books

  All Rights Reserved

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, events, entities and places are either products of the author's imagination or are used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual people, businesses, entities or events is entirely coincidental.

  This book uses British English spelling.

  Kindle edition

  First published in November 2025

  by Blackwych Books, London

  A new morning has arrived. On a bare, rundown ward at a London care home, Nurse Kim Watson is waiting for one of her oldest patients to die.

  Edna Vincent just keeps hanging on and hanging on. Horrified by the woman's plight, Kim tries to look after her, but the ward is on the verge of shutting down and there's no-one else to help. Until, that is, the double doors are flung open and two very unusual strangers arrive.

  As the bemused Kim tries to get rid of her visitors, Doctor Crowman Mancrow sets about examining Edna. Convinced that he's about to solve the mystery of a lifetime, Mancrow tells sets out his equipment and starts to wait, while his assistant – the mysterious Jenny – desperately attempts to reassure Kim that there's nothing to worry about.

  There's just one problem. Mancrow's experiment looks doomed to failure, and even Edna's sudden death appears unable to fix things. Will the beleaguered scientist accept that his theory was wrong all along, or is he prepared to go to any lengths in order to uncover the truth?

  1am is the sixth book in the Haunting of London series, a collection of stand-alone but loosely linked horror stories set over the course of one ghostly twenty-four-hour period in the city.

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Epilogue

  1am

  (The Haunting of London book 6)

  Chapter One

  As a faint rasping sound emerged from the back of Edna's throat, Kim slowly moved the cotton swab closer and used its tip to moisten the old lady's lips.

  “There we go, Edna,” she whispered, moving the swab carefully from one corner of the mouth to the other. “Does that feel a little better?”

  In truth, she heard no real change. Edna had been gasping for several hours now, clinging to life in her room at the hospice. She'd been worsening for days but now the end seemed to be near. That happened sometimes; everyone who worked on the ward knew that occasionally a patient just seemed to give up. Besides, nobody could hold on forever. Eventually everyone – even the strongest – had to give up the fight.

  When she'd started her shift a little before nine, Kim Watson had been told to expect Edna to die at some point during the night, but of course the understaffed facility had left her entirely on her own to cover this particular ward. The place was due to shut down entirely around a month later and Edna was the only remaining patient, which meant that standards had crashed through the floor and nobody in any position of authority gave a damn.

  Numerous rules and regulations were already being broken but...

  “Don't be the squeaky wheel,” Kim's supervisor Yaz had insisted earlier. “Just do your job.”

  “Okay, Edna,” Kim said now as she set the swab aside and stepped over to the night stand next to the bed. “I'm just going to check a few things and I'll be back in a couple of minutes.”

  A brief flash filled the right side of her field of vision. She half turned to look at the rickety, broken blinds covering the window, and sure enough a few seconds later she heard another ominous rumble of thunder somewhere farther off in the city. The blinds covering the window had been left just open enough – and had just enough damaged slats – to reveal the lights of the city with rain falling hard against the glass. Occasionally the rain became strong enough to cause a pattering sound, but for the most part the room's dominant sound was the hissing and beeping of the medical equipment.

  Kim fiddled for a moment with the various pots while Edna continued to emit a kind of rattling sound.

  “Just try to relax,” she added, turning and carrying a small dish toward the door. “I know that's not exactly easy when you're -”

  Stopping in the doorway, she paused for a moment before looking back toward the bed. Something about Edna had always struck her as being extra sad; during her time at the hospice, Kim had dealt with countless patients and had sat next to beds while so many of them had died. Many had family members who came to be present at the end, some had no-one, but Edna had always seemed particularly alone. There had been no mention of family or friends, just a slow acceptance that the final moments were coming. How, Kim wondered, could somebody get to eighty-three years of age without having anybody who cared enough to visit?

  Was this unusual?

  Did most people gather people during their lives, so that they didn't have to die alone? Or was this in fact quite normal, and was it in fact unusual to have lots of family and friends? How did the majority of people arrive at their final destination?

  In all her years of working at the hospice, that was the one question Kim hadn't managed to answer yet.

  ***

  “I'm just saying,” Kim continued a few minutes later, standing at the desk in the corridor with an old phone receiver against one ear, “the fact that the place is closing down soon doesn't mean we should be letting standards slip. For starters, I shouldn't be alone on the ward.”

  “You've only got old Edna to worry about,” Yaz said over the line, already sounding beyond bored, “and she's half dead already. Sorry, I know that's a little blunt but... it's also true.”

  “It's also not the point. This ward has been a disaster since it opened.”

  “I know,” Yaz said. “We all know.”

  “Was that more thunder?” Kim asked, looking over her shoulder for a moment, then turning to face the desk again. “Sorry, it sounds so much louder from up here on the top floor. This place should have been condemned years ago.”

  “Get over it.”

  “Some of the doors and windows are literally the wrong way round,” Kim pointed out, unable to hide a sense of exasperation. “How can contractors be so incompetent that they literally install doors and windows the wrong way round? And then how can the bosses be so incompetent that they never get it fixed?”

  “Don't focus on that,” Yaz replied. “Focus on Edna. Just make sure she doesn't go anywhere.”

  “Go anywhere?” Kim replied, furrowing her brow. “She hasn't left her bed in over a week. How could she go anywhere?”

  “Just a joke, Kim,” came the response. “Listen, we're beyond stretched. You know how things have been since the last cutbacks. Just try to soldier on. Believe me, there are others who've got it worse than you.”

  “I'm not complaining,” Kim said with a sigh. “Not really. I just think patient care is important. If word got out about the fact that we're ignoring so many of the guidelines, we -”

  “Word isn't going to get out.”

  “But -”

  “Word isn't going to get out,” Yaz said again, more firmly this time – and now her voice carried a faint hint of a threat. “Damn, it's wet out there. This must be the rainiest night I've ever known in London.”

  She yawned.

  “And it's one in the morning,” she went on. “I feel like I've been on this shift forever, but I've still got another five hundred million hours to go. Do you ever find that some nights seem longer than others?”

  Leaning past the counter, Kim looked through into the next room and saw that Edna hadn't moved a muscle. In fact, as the machines continued to make their usual noises, she felt as if nothing had changed at all.

  “I know the feeling,” she said under her breath.

  “Is old Edna talking your head off?”

  “What do you mean?” Kim asked, turning around and leaning back against the counter while twirling the cord connecting the receiver to the phone on the desk.

  “Is she boring you with her stories?”

  “She hasn't spoken for over twenty-four hours,” Kim pointed out. “You know that.”

  “Again, just a joke.”

  “It doesn't seem very funny.”

  “Listen, Kim, I've got to go,” Yaz said with another sigh, “but I'll give you a call in an hour or two, just to see how you're getting on. Or I'll swing by if I get the chance.”

  “My union rep -”

  “Your union rep is an obnoxious, boring little ass who doesn't need to know what's going on,” Yaz said firmly. “Seriously, it's all hands on deck right now during the close-down period. The rest of the place is already out of action, th
at ward's all that remains. I mean it, Kim, don't go causing problems for the rest of us.”

  “I just think it's wrong, that's all.”

  “Welcome to the company.”

  “People deserve respect in their final moments,” Kim added. “They deserve to be looked after properly. Instead it's all about the numbers, and about how much care we've budgeted to give them. I know we have to think about the money side of things, but can't we also treat them like they're human beings?”

  “How long have you been on the phone to me for?”

  “A few minutes.”

  “Minutes you could have spent with Edna,” Yaz pointed out. “Get back in there. Sit with her until the end. Hold her hand, if that makes you feel better.”

  “It might make her feel better,” Kim replied. “Then again, I don't know if she's even aware of anything anymore.”

  “Do it just in case,” Yaz said. “And now I really do need to get off the line. I'll speak to you soon, Kim, okay? And listen, I'm only down the road at the other site, so I really will try to drop by and see you in a bit. And I'll call Emily or Lizzy or Beth and see if they can get in and help you finish your shift. I can't say any fairer than that, can I? Ciao!”

  Once the call was over, Kim set the receiver down and stood alone at the desk. She wasn't really sure why she'd even called Yaz, except that sometimes she liked hearing another human voice. She certainly hadn't expected much help. Turning and looking over at the open doorway leading into Edna's room, she found herself wondering just how much longer her last and only patient was going to cling on. Would Edna make it all the way through the night?

  Spotting a poster on the wall, with a photo of a smiling nurse next to a slogan about the company caring for hospice patients, she felt a shiver run through her bones.

  “Yeah right,” she muttered as she headed around from behind the desk. “If -”

  Suddenly hearing a banging sound, she turned and looked along the corridor. She saw the closed double doors at the far end, and after a moment she noticed that she could hear footsteps – no, two sets of footsteps – marching toward those doors from the other side. She knew that absolutely nobody else was supposed to be on the ward so late, yet the footsteps made their way ever closer until finally the doors were flung open to reveal a very thin man wearing a dark suit, followed by a younger woman in a knee-length dress.

  “At least they had one of these to lend us at the hotel,” the woman said, shaking an umbrella as she closed it. “That Renny Residence place isn't so bad, not really. I've got to hand it to you, Crowman. You sure know how to pick a decent hotel.”

  “Who are you?” Kim stammered as the two new arrivals hurried toward her and stopped to look through into Edna's room. “What are you doing here? You can't just storm in here like this! Where are your credentials? No-one told me there was anyone coming, I need to call my -”

  “Shut up,” the man said, staring at Edna's bed while holding a hand up so that his palm was almost touching Kim's face. “All those questions are irrelevant. We're here to see Professor Edna Vincent in her final moments, and by the look of things it's a good job we didn't get here any later. You don't need to do anything. We'll handle it all from here.”

  With that, he lowered his hand and stepped into the room.

  “What's going on?” Kim asked, turning to the other woman. “Who are you two?”

  “University researchers,” the woman replied, holding a hand out for Kim to shake. “My name's Jenny Colgrove and my friend who you just met is Doctor Crowman Mancrow. We're here to conduct... well, I suppose you could call it an experiment.”

  Chapter Two

  “Edna, can you hear me?” Crowman said softly, stepping around the bed and then stopping to look down at the old woman's calm face and closed eyes. “Edna, it's me.”

  He gently touched the side of her arm.

  “Edna,” he continued, “it's Crowman. From the university. I came, just as I promised I would. I came so we can finish our work. You and I. Together. Just the way we talked about and...”

  For a few seconds, seemingly lost for words, he fell silent.

  “The way we talked about,” he repeated with a hint of uncertainty. “Everything. All of it. You know what I mean.”

  Standing in the doorway next to Jenny, Kim stared with a continued sense of bemusement at the bizarre scene. The usual machines were beeping and hissing, and occasionally the rain outside became strong enough to really batter the windows, even high up on the tenth floor of the building. A very faint draught was causing the damaged blinds – with hopelessly misaligned slats – to occasionally sway gently.

  “This must seem a little strange,” Jenny whispered finally.

  Kim turned to her just as lightning flashed outside, followed swiftly by thunder.

  “You'll get used to it,” Jenny added with a faint smile. “Or not. Sorry, I didn't really explain properly. Crowman and I are from a department that researches certain... unusual situations. Things that go bump in the night, if you like.”

  As Crowman moved around to the other side of the bed and continued to inspect Edna, Kim tried to work out exactly what she was supposed to say. So far she felt as if these two intruders had crashed into her peaceful night and had brought a trail of madness in their wake.

  “Crowman and Edna worked together,” Jenny continued, keeping her voice a little low as a mark of respect. “At the university. In the same department. That was all long before I got involved, of course. I was barely born when the great and esteemed Professor Edna Vincent was at the height of her career, but back then she sort of took Crowman under her wing. She taught him everything she knew, and in turn he later began to teach me everything I know. So I suppose you could say that I've inherited Edna Vincent's knowledge in a kind of... second-hand way. So to speak. And I've read all her books multiple times. They're really great.”

  “I don't understand any of this,” Kim replied. “This building is supposed to be secured!”

  “Oh, you mean that lock system on the door downstairs?” Jenny said with a mischievous glint in her eye. “Yeah, we bypassed that. Sorry, it seemed quicker than calling.”

  “You broke in?”

  “Nothing's broken.”

  “But -”

  “All the bits will go back together neatly when we leave. I promise.”

  “You can't be here!” Kim hissed, struggling to stay calm and then turning to go over to the desk in the corridor. “I'm going to call my -”

  “No, don't!” Jenny said, grabbing her by the wrist to hold her back. “Please.”

  “Let go of me!”

  “Not until you understand,” Jenny continued, squeezing a little tighter as she suddenly began to display a hitherto hidden sense of urgency. “Please, just let me explain. I know we've been a little flippant but we really are investigators from the university. I can show you our credentials.”

  “I don't care about your credentials,” Kim stammered, “I care about your unauthorised access.”

  “You're a real stickler for the rules, huh?”

  “I need you to leave right now,” Kim said firmly, “or I'll have no choice but to call the police and have the pair of you arrested.”

  “You're not going to do that, Kimberley,” Jenny said, having read the name-badge attached to Kim's chest. “Should I call you Kimberley, or do you prefer Kim?”

  “I want -”

  “I've got good news,” Crowman said, hurrying out of the room and stopping in front of them both. Grinning, he waited for someone to respond, but he clearly couldn't contain his excitement for much longer. “Edna's about to die!”

  ***

  “Who knows what's going on inside her brain?” he continued a couple of minutes later, sitting on a squeaky leather chair next to the hospital bed and peering at Edna's face just as her left cheek twitched slightly. “It's shutting down. Neurons are firing. The electrical signals are all scrambled. I can't even begin to imagine what it's like when the human brain goes through this one final process. It's like...”

  He paused as he tried to come up with the right word – and for a moment he seemed to be in a state of genuine awe.

  “A storm?” he added cautiously. “Yes, maybe a storm. An electrical storm. It's like her consciousness is rampaging through her memories and ransacking the place, rifling through an entire lifetime of moments – many of which were probably forgotten until now. Imagine someone running amok in some kind of library and ripping all the filing cabinets open. Imagine the forgotten wonders that might spill out.”