No One Knows You Were Here

A forgotten man is still alive. And he wants justice

Lynsham Hall sunk into the fens, long abandoned by her old creators. The heavy red clay weighed deep against the peat, the black rot and decay blooming through the wallpaper into gardens in the gloom. The stables had long been reduced to crumbling brick and heaving reeds, the lonely great house stark against the flat skies. There was nothing on this hinterland, save the lonely cries of the gulls, and for all the world, you would assume the only residents here were trespassing teenage boys, armed with spray cans and tales of hauntings. But none ever came. Perhaps it was too far, perhaps it had just been too long forgotten, but still, no one ever came.

But there was a resident. A famous resident, now keen to be forgotten, to be hidden, to rot and to fester and decay with that old house, forever away from prying eyes.

He had died in 2009. Or rather, his image had, packed away in hurried cardboard boxes, hastily cut from commercials, his presence scrubbed off the earth. “If you have any sense, Thom,” the studio executive had snapped down the line after forty-seven missed calls, “You’d let yourself disappear. We’re doing you a favour. The police don’t need an excuse to press charges this time around. And-” he had said, inhaling a glass of wine, “Don’t say we spoke…