Emilia Featherstone paused on the staircase and gazed out of the window down on the grounds of Brookfield Hall and sniffed. As she suspected, Jonas was not keeping them up to standard. The autumn leaves littered the pathways in untidy multi-coloured heaps and the lawned areas obviously hadn’t been cut in some time. By now the December dampness had sodden the turf and it would not be possible to do anything with it until the spring when, no doubt, it would be past salvaging.
She sniffed again and this time there was no mistaking the disapproval in the gesture. Her gaze dropped to the windowsill and observed the dust there. Her nose wrinkled as she drew a gloved finger across it, trailing a jagged line through the dirt.
She heard movement behind her and, turning, she saw her nephew, Jonas Blackstock, struggling up the stairs with her luggage.
‘Really, you should have got Braithwaite to do that. It’s his job after all and quite honestly you haven’t the brawn for it.’
Jonas forced a smile and released the two large cases on to the landing. ‘Braithwaite’s not here at the moment, I’m afraid. He was called away suddenly. His brother is very ill.’
‘How terribly inconvenient. These people have no sense of timing.’
‘Well, let’s get your bags up to your room, eh?’ Once more Jonas grappled the two cases and, with a certain amount of huffing and puffing, mounted the final set of stairs ahead of his aunt Emilia.
‘Your usual room,’ he said, throwing the door open to reveal the large but gloomy candlelit bedroom. A meagre fire sputtered in the grate. This was the chamber she used when she made her bi-annual visits, in the spring and autumn, to Brookfield Hall. It was a promise she had made, unwisely she now thought, to Jonas’ parents before they died. She had never cared much for the young man but since he had inherited the hall and the Blackstock fortune he had behaved in a scurrilous and spendthrift fashion, indulging in his passion for fleshly pleasures and his interest in the black arts, demonology and witchcraft. He had claimed that he was making some kind of intellectual study of the subject, but Aunt Emilia had other suspicions.
She stepped inside the bedchamber, surreptitiously running her finger along the sideboard. To her dismay, it made a furrow in the dust.
‘Is your housemaid away visiting a sick relative as well?’ Aunt Emilia asked with sarcastic sternness.
Jonas chuckled nervously. ‘Actually Matilda gave her notice a month ago and I haven’t managed to get round to replacing her yet. You know how it is.’
‘I am afraid I do not. An efficient and well-run house needs reliable servants. There is a distinct air of neglect about Brookfield since my last visit. Tell me, how many of the staff are still here?’
‘Well …’
‘Come now, Jonas: the truth. Will Mrs Craven be cooking our dinner this evening?’
The young man shook his head. ‘I am afraid not. But I have prepared a very nice chicken dish.’
‘You! And what of Mrs Craven?’
‘She became difficult. Wanting more money. I had to let her go.’
Aunt Emilia sat on the edge of the bed and sighed. ‘If your poor mother could see the place now … Oh, Jonas.’
‘Don’t worry Aunt, I have plans to sort out everything out.’
‘What plans?’
Jonas chuckled again. ‘Plans. Things will be a little basic for you on this visit, but in the spring when you return, you’ll see a great improvement.’
Aunt Emilia gave her nephew a stern glance. She didn’t believe a word he had said.
‘I’ll leave you now to unpack and I’ll light a big fire in the sitting room.’ He left swiftly before she could criticise him further. However, he had only reached the top of the staircase when he heard a cry of alarm and his name being called out. He rushed back to the bedroom to find his aunt staring at an object placed at the centre of a small table situated by the window.
As he entered her arm shot out, her bony forefinger pointing at the object.
‘What on earth is that dreadful thing?’
‘Oh, my skull, you mean. It is a little curio I bought on one of my trips to London. It rather took my fancy’.
‘It is revolting.’
Jonas smiled and picked up the skull, causing his aunt to flinch and take a step backwards.
‘It is a stigmata skull. Well, that’s what the funny little fellow who sold it to me called it. It’s supposed to have magical properties. All a lot of nonsense, of course.’
‘A stigmata skull? I don’t understand.’
Jonas caressed the top of the skull. ‘It is able to foretell death.’
‘What a horrible idea. How?’
‘Its eyes bleed. They bleed real blood. If you gaze at the skull and see the eyes bleed you are doomed to die.’
Aunt Emilia’s hand flew to her mouth to stifle a gasp. ‘So you thought you’d leave it in my room.’
Jonas shook his head, greatly perturbed. ‘No, no not at all. I put it there after I bought it in the summer. To be honest, I forgot it was in here. I didn’t mean to upset you.’
‘Well you have. Get it out of my sight immediately Take the foul thing away from me.’
‘Of course, Aunt.’ Clutching the skull to his chest, Jonas scurried away.
The dinner that evening was a disaster. Aunt Emilia, wearing a very heavy shawl over a thick velvet gown, constantly complained of being cold and left most of the meal, declaring it inedible. Jonas plied her with wine regularly, hoping that would ease her temper, but it had little effect on her demeanour. It just caused her to slur her words slightly.
As the candles and the fire burned low, Aunt Emilia seemed ready to retire for the night, but just as Jonas thought she was about to return to her room, she uttered a very audible sigh and leaned forward on the table, her arm outstretched, the imperious finger pointing at Jonas.
‘You have got yourself into a mess, haven’t you, boy?’
‘A mess?’ The surprise in his voice was unconvincing.
‘When your parents died and left you this house and a respectable fortune, I thought you would abandon your recklessly extravagant behaviour and take on some employment. It needs brains, industry and care to maintain a house like Brookfield. I expected you to behave in a sensible manner, not keep wandering up to London buying phenomenally expensive rare books and weird artefacts – such as stigmata skulls. But the evidence suggests otherwise. No matter how feebly you have tried to cover it up, you now have no money left to employ your household staff – butler, gardener, housemaid, cook. They are all gone. Isn’t that so? You are now in those proverbial dire straits … without a canoe or whatever that wretched phrase is.’
Jonas nodded meekly. ‘I didn’t realise things were getting so bad,’ he mumbled.
‘Didn’t realise! Didn’t realise! Good heavens boy, you’ve got eyes in your head haven’t you? Look around at the dust, the decay, the untidiness. This place is more like a wretched mausoleum now than a house.’
Jonas stared at his napkin.
‘What on earth are you going to do?’
There was a long pause and the only sound in the room was the faint hissing of the logs on the dying fire.
‘I was … I was hoping that perhaps … Well, perhaps you might help me, Aunt.’
‘Help you.’
‘If you could see some way to letting me have some money …’
Aunt Emilia emitted a cry that seemed to be a strange combination of a scream and an ejaculation of rage.
‘So that’s it, is it? You want me to help fund your profligate ways. To shore up your incompetence with my money. Having squandered your parents’ fortune, you now seek to squander mine.’
Her voice was loud and harsh and reverberated around the large chamber.
‘I was hoping …’
‘Well, hope again, boy. Not one penny of mine will I pass to you while I am alive. I suspected that I would be presented with this bare-faced entreaty when you encouraged me to visit you earlier than my usual time. You always were transparent.’ She threw down her napkin and rose unsteadily to her feet. ‘To say that you have disappointed me would be a great understatement. Your profligacy has sullied your parents’ memory, which I find unforgiveable. I am ashamed to call you kin. I bid you good night.’
With these words echoing around the barren dining room, Aunt Emilia departed, slamming the door on her exit. Reaching the foot of the stairs, she paused, leaning against the wall. Her heart was pumping wildly and she felt faint. The doctor had advised her to avoid any form of over excitement. Her fragile heart was not strong enough to cope with strong passions and here she was allowing her fury at her nephew’s ruthless indolence to boil over. She couldn’t help it. His selfish indulgences and excesses had been eating away at her for some time and when the brat appealed to her for money to continue in the same fashion … Well! This thought sent another spasm of pain to her chest. She must take her pills. She had left them in her room. She knew they would help control the erratic rhythm of her heart, which was already causing her severe discomfort. In truth, she knew that it was the pills that were keeping her alive. Taking a deep breath, she mounted the stairs and made her way slowly to her bedroom.
Lighting the candles, she moved to the table by the window where she had left her pillbox. It wasn’t there, but its absence was not the reason that she gasped and clutched her chest. It was the presence on the table of that wretched skull she had demanded Jonas remove from the room. It gleamed eerily in the flickering light and seemed to be grinning at her. But what caused Aunt Emilia to sink to her knees with fear and horror was the sight of the blood that was dripping from the eye sockets, leaving spidery red traces down the side of the skull.
The fierce pain in her chest now seemed to consume her whole body. Those red, blood-soaked eyes seemed to glower in triumph at her. They were a portent of death: her death. They were willing her heart to stop. Her torso twisted in agony and then with a final groan, she fell forward on her face. She was quite dead.
It was some thirty minutes later when the door opened and a figure entered the room. It was Jonas Blackstock. He stared down at the lifeless form of his aunt, his features registering no emotion whatsoever and then suddenly he smiled; this progressed into a chuckle and then a hearty laugh. ‘Good night, sweet aunt,’ he intoned when his laughter had subsided, ‘a flight angels sing thee to thy rest.’ This brought on another bout of laughter.
Then he moved to the table by the window and lifted up the skull and stroked it, before inserting his finger into one of the eye sockets. He removed it and lifted the now crimson digit up towards the candlelight, his eyes sparkling with merriment. ‘Red ink,’ he said quietly. ‘My dear aunt, it was only red ink.’
By early spring, the business concerning his aunt’s will had been settled and Jonas Blackstock had been left a considerable portion of her fortune. He had already started to make inroads into the funds through an expensive sojourn to London where he had purchased costly volumes and trinkets to enhance his studies into the black arts. He returned to Brookfield Hall on 21st March, the spring equinox, the date, in fact, when his aunt had been due to visit again. In recognition of this, he toasted her heartily with a fine bottle of Burgundy which he supped with his dinner that evening. Somewhat unsteadily, he made his way early to his bedchamber and it was only while he was disrobing that he noticed the skull. The stigmata skull. It was sitting on his dressing table. He had no idea how it had got there. It certainly was none of his doing. He had left it in his aunt’s room.
His body tingling with apprehension, he approached the skull cautiously and then took a step back in horror. Blood was seeping from its eyes and trickling down its bony visage. It was blood this time, he knew. Rich, thick blood. He attempted to cry out but his throat constricted with the dread that assailed him, and all that emerged from his open mouth was a strange strangulated croak. He was held frozen by the sight of the skull and the shimmering scarlet effusion that drooled from its eye sockets.
And then he heard a strange rustling from behind him. Slowly he willed his body to turn in the direction of the sound. Standing before him was the figure of Aunt Emilia. It was as though he was viewing her reflection in an ancient pitted mirror, a colourless, wavering image. She smiled at Jonas and raised her hand in greeting.
‘I have arrived for my spring visit.’
He heard the words in his head. The voice was that of his aunt’s but she had not opened her mouth.
He croaked the same cry of terror once more, twisting his head back to gaze at the skull again. Now, it was completely covered in blood. A seething crimson entity vibrating with evil.
And he knew; he knew what this meant.
He wanted to move, he wanted to run, but he was transfixed by the horrid thing before him. Slowly he felt the energy dissipate from his body as though some invisible force was switching off all his organs. He crumpled to the floor. As he lay there, life ebbing away from him, splatters of blood from the stigmata skull dripped down upon his face.