DRY LEAVES AND DEBRIS blew through the liberated entrance, gusting past Lucy’s tentative legs. They scattered across the black and white skeined marble flooring of the grand entrance hall, dancing to the tune of the thermal currents that carried them in, until Lucy turned and slammed the door shut behind her, decapitating the wind.
The deep, woody crash rang throughout the entire building, overlapping echoes chasing through the abandoned rooms, hallways and staircases… The multilayered pulse finally dissipated into the stale air, leaving a deathly silence in its wake almost deafening in its nothingness.
Lucy remained static in the quiet. Just listing… her eyes the only things moving within a face searching for the comfort of familiarity. She could feel the thump of her heart pounding in her throat.
She recognised the geography of the space, but each individual detail seemed subtly different to her memories, but she realised they can’t have been.
She unrooted her feet and moved further into the chilled hollow of the vast, open space, the soft tip-tap of her pumps echoing off the walls as she roamed across the flat, marble slab.
It put her in mind of the near deafening gunshot sounds her mother’s stiletto heels would make whenever she hurried across this space. Lucy smiled at the memory, and the fact that she’d been successful in recollecting one.
She took time to reacquaint herself with each and every element of the room, rebooting her recognition of a building that the passage of time had pushed to the back of her mind.
Her eyes drifted from one overtly ornate object to the next, soaking up their extravagance, her face luminous with wonder, awe, and a newly discovered ability to appreciate.
She drank in the details of her forgotten past: Chinese vases, too immense to reside in a gatehouse, sitting atop ornate, French side tables with scrolled, serpentine legs recurving down to lions feet, carved from the finest woods, and glazed with the purest of polishes; delicate balloon-back chairs, embellished with red velvet upholstery, set evenly around the perimeter of the room; hung tapestries competing for wall space with portraits of those who had been, and gone; and heavy, painted landscapes chronicling the way the world once looked. All things she had looked upon many times before, but now, only just seen. An eclectic mix of decor that would look ridiculous anywhere else but in a room as ostentatious as this, all sharing a common layer of dust, and a place in the past of a family that had moved on.
She adjusted her focus back to the geography of the room. Directly ahead, opposite the main entrance, were large double-doors that Lucy remembered led into the library. Rising from either side were twin staircases, mirrored in appearance, climbing away from each other before circling back to reunite on a common landing area that overlooked the entirety of the room from above the library entrance.
There were two more doors to her left: the first led into what her mother used to refer to as ‘the drawing room’. The other opened into a large dining hall that housed a table so preposterous in its length and proportions, that it made any attempt to eat while sitting at it virtually impossible from laughing so hard.
Lucy dropped her eyes to the floor and chuckled. ‘Ridiculous bloody table,’ she muttered, the words echoing around the must-scented room.
Her mother never felt that she knew enough people to even consider holding a dinner party in such a huge expanse of room, so in all its time, it remained virtually unused, except as a place for Lucy, Hilly and Sam to play. A reminiscent smile played across Lucy’s lips.
Her gaze drifted upwards from the dining room doors… She swelled with awe as gleaming eyes absorbed in wonderment the hundreds of ornate, finial-centred, quad-form plaster mouldings that encrusted the entirety of the huge expanse of ceiling. Its unnecessary opulence bejewelled by an enormous chandelier dropping half the height of the room, thousands of crystal droplets each coated with five-year jackets of dust and delicate veils of cobwebs.
She found herself lost in her gaze, no longer able to focus on the sheer complexity of the patterned ceiling crowning her wonder. Her pupils palpitated, their ability to judge distance confused. How high is that ceiling? she thought. Could be a metre, could be a mile.
She rocked on her heals, no longer able to judge up from down, and shut her eyes tight to reset her body’s scrambled equilibrium.
Lucy felt sure that she has never truly appreciated how beautiful and awe-invoking her old home truly was, until now, seen through retrospective eyes, older eyes, now of an age where she was able to appreciate such things.
She came to the realisation that, as a child, she must’ve rarely ever looked up, probably far more fascinated with life at ground level.
How magnificent and regal she thought the chandelier managed to look, in spite of its time-inherited coating of grime. In fact, the sheer elegance of the entire room still managed to shine through the pungent air of dereliction.
She lowered her gaze from the chandelier to the opposite wall, and popped a smile as she saw the entrance to the games room – much fun was had in there as children.
She remembered how she and Sam would play a version of snooker that used their hands, the cues being deemed out of bounds by her mother as a baize-saving exercise.
The rules were simple, throw any coloured ball towards any other ball, and hope it knocked it into any pocket. And if it did, act as if there was considerable judgment involved, and that the outcome was planned.
She chuckled to herself. ‘Stupid kids,’ she whispered into the seclusion, pulling herself back from her memories to continue the reunion.
To the left of the games room were a pair of large double doors that led into the old ballroom. She ambled across to take a closer look. The doors to the room had been left ajar. She wandered in…
She felt an inflation of her recollections as memories of the space thrust forwards to the forefront of her mind.
The room still looked every bit as cavernous and majestic as she remembered, mirroring the dining hall on the opposite side, but without the preposterous table to fill the space, it always seemed much larger.
The sensation was not at all what she was expecting, imagining that the room would somehow look smaller to her now that she was older and taller, but if anything, it looked larger, grander, and even more impressive than her rekindled memories would’ve suggested.
Vivid echoes of the many gatherings held in this impressive expanse of room over the years manifested in her mind. She remembered how her mother would allow her to stay up late whenever she held what she used to refer to as ‘a get together’, something Lucy recalled with extreme fondness, it allowed her – as a child – to dip a toe into what it might feel like to be an adult.
Her memories seemed to be returning thick and fast now, keying off the visuals of the building, finding immense enjoyment in her reunion.
Lucy’s recent apprehension towards Hobswyke seemed to her almost ludicrous now, her prior unease all but melting away with each room she reacquainted herself with.
She turned and made for the staircases, extending an arm and making a grab at the handles of the library door as she trotted past, but they were locked.
Her long legs consumed the treads with ease, two at a time, creaking beneath the first human feet that had graced their boards in more than half a decade.
She reached the top, and turned to take in the bird’s-eye view of the hall from the landing. ‘Wow!’ She exhaled through a face glowing with awe, her voice echoing around the ceiling, unable to contain her pride and excitement at knowing that this incredible building was not only in her family, part of her family, but would, one day, in all likelihood, belong to her.
She squealed like an overexcited child, and turned to make her way towards her old bedroom. running along the expansive landings, footsteps padding on the heavily piled carpets, throwing cursory glances into all the other rooms as she rushed past, her excited energy helping to fill the lifeless void left by a five-year absence of human activity.
She spied the door to her old room, and galloped towards it, her excitement rising like a warmed thermometer until she could feel it in her throat.
Reaching out an arm, she grasped the frame, her inertia swinging her in through the door.
She stopped dead, face relaxing out of its smile, overwhelmed by apparitions from her past…
The room was peppered with toys, trinkets and ornaments that would have failed to hold the fascination of a twelve year old girl, but that now – many years on – drew fond memories to the fore in one looking on with a maturer eye. A room filled with inconsequential objects made relevant by nothing more than the simple passage of time.
Lucy wandered into the familiarity of the space, a space that held nothing but happy memories, except perhaps, the day they all hurriedly left – for reasons still unknown.
An ominous image of the library doors pushed forwards from the shadows of her mind. She shut her eyes to shake it away, keen to reacquaint herself with her childhood haven, undesiring of anything negative tainting what she was determined would be a joyous occasion.
She reopened her eyes again, and looked about the room…
Her old bed was sat before her, exactly as she remembered it, still made up with the linen she last slept in the night before they left.
She walked to it, and swiped her hand across the sheets a few times, but there was surprisingly little dust. So, gently, she perched herself on the edge… She recognised the creak-pattern of the springs, she’d heard them a thousand times before. The bed felt soft, welcoming, familiar.
Lucy peered past her left shoulder, watching as her fingers stroked the pure white cotton, her eyes smiling at the multitude of happy memories that were now erupting in her thoughts like fireflies in a midnight sky.
Lifting eyes to the windows, she carefully cleared a tear from beneath her glistening cheek with the side of her finger, trying not to smudge her carefully applied makeup.
She spied her collection of dolls and teddy bears arranged neatly on an old, mahogany toy box. She beamed, and rose to take a closer look…
Stooping, she carefully drew out what used to be her favourite doll from the core of the throng. ‘Sandy’ she used to call her, because the doll always reminded her of a character from the movie Grease. She crimped her lower lip between her teeth as she spent time rearranging her outfit, stroking her hair into a more current style – the one she was sporting being at least five years out of date. ‘There,’ she announced with triumph to her old friend and the rest of the toys looking on. ‘Much, much better. Very trendy.’
She flinched a regretful smile to mask the inner sadness she felt at having to grow up, and placed the doll carefully back again, this time right at the front – pride of place.
She turned her attention to her right side, and saw the antique, marquetry table that she used to keep her things on in the corner: puzzles, music boxes, games, souvenirs, photos, mementos, and a chintzy ceramic pot spilling over with costume jewellery her mother had let her have over the years. She smirked at how small the table now looked, and wondered how on earth she used to sit at it?
She ambled across to it, tilting her gaze at the random collection of memories, brushing her fingers gently over the age-lifted inlay of the undulating table top.
Her fingers rose and fell over the contours of the puckered marquetry. Her mother used to refer to it as ‘patina’. ‘Like laughter lines worn proudly on a face that’s lived a life of happiness,’ she used to say. For the first time, Lucy now understood what she meant. She stroked her other hand across the softness of her cheek, comparing the life-lived table top to her perfect young skin.
She attempted to imagine what she would look like when she, herself, would be older, then thought of her mother’s face, and how elegantly she managed to wear her years.
She quickly scanned the rest of the room, grabbing a past-favoured piece of jewellery from the pot as a keepsake, then with her mother still on her mind, left through the door…
She padded back along the corridor a short way, and turned into what was her mother’s old room, just two doors down from her own.
She stood in the doorway and closed her eyes, drawing a long, deliberate breath in through her nose… The air in the room was inert, but still charged with the exact same scent as her mother’s current bedroom, just markedly less so.
She looked about at all of the beautiful furniture that had been abandoned, then inexplicably replaced by items so similar in appearance that it would be difficult to tell them apart. ‘Why didn’t she just take these?’ she had to ask herself, unable to contrive an answer.
She pondered the detritus left from the move: emptied drawers left pulled out, wardrobe doors ajar, unfavoured clothing and shoes laying piled up on the bed. To Lucy, the room typified one left in a hurry, the condition it was in suggesting a certain level of panic, an undeniable urgency, a desire to ‘get out, as quick as we can!’
Lucy couldn’t help but frown at the sight that faced her, wondering what on earth could be so wrong with a building that the occupants just had to leave, and with such immediacy.
With a heavily pensive brow, she amble back out into the corridor. ‘The library,’ she said out loud, looking around at all the open doors. ‘Why is it the only room that’s locked?’
She made her way back along the corridor towards the top of the staircases, determined to find an answer to the question…
As she hit the mezzanine landing, she caught a glimpse through the corner of her eye of the library doors down through the flashing balustrades. A concoction of mixed feelings – nervous, excited, intrigued apprehension, swelled in her knotting stomach.
She creaked down the staircase towards the locked room, taking the keys from her rucksack once more, fumbling to find any visual clues to which one might unlock the answers to her questions. But there were none, so methodically, she began to try them all. One after the other, after the other, after the… CLACK! The locks withdrew from their housing.
The pit of her gut lurched and began to quiver. She crunched her stomach muscles and blew through pursed lips to try to clear the feeling. She dropped the keys back into the bag, and slipped it on.
Grabbing both door handles, she tentatively twisted them down, then furtively, pushed them slowly away from her…
The musty smell of antiquated books curled past the doors as they swung open. A spreading fan of light arced across the floor of the windowless room as the doors finally settled into their open position, unveiling a room in utter disarray.
Lucy’s fascinated eyes swept the ceiling-high shelving lining the walls of the dingy, semi-lit room. Half of them neatly filled with books, the other half lying empty.
The tomes and volumes that had for so long sat within them had been dislodged from their long-term haunts, and carefully packed in boxes around the perimeter of the floor.
Her pupils finally widened to the relative lightlessness, allowing here to better see the space around her.
To the far right-hand side, in shadow, the carpets that had graced the floor for the better part of two centuries had been unceremoniously ripped up, and piled in a heap against the wall. There was a heavy-set, leather-topped desk pushed to one side that had originally sat in the centre of the room, with the buttoned leather seat married to it stacked on top. Other random objects that had been displaced lay scattered around the perimeter, but it was what lay dead-centre of the floor that arrested Lucy’s interest. A sight that fulfilled the least of her expectations.
She gazed in utter disbelief at something that must have always been in this room, hidden away out of sight, out of mind, out of knowledge. Hidden in the house that she had lived in the entirety of her younger years. A secret that must have existed beneath their everyday comings and goings for all that time.
What she saw before her chilled her to the very marrow of her bones, and all she could do was stand, and stare, and wonder if it was real.
Her slender shadow cut across a stack of floorboards that had been lifted and piled up to one side, revealing a large, circular section of floor that dropped down into the centre of the library like the maw of hell.
Lucy walked tentatively past the stacks of planking towards the pit, and could see it dropped down at least half her height, if not more.
As she reached the edge, her freshly acclimatised eyes solidified to the sight they saw. She was presented with what must have been Antoine Mallette’s ceremonial circle, hidden for decades beneath their feet, beneath their lives, beneath their ignorance, now uncovered for the world to see.
Emerging ominously from the murk at the base of the pit, stood an elaborate stone altar, draped with illustrated cloths, heavy with mildew, and adorned with black candles; ornate handled knives, and an eclectic mix of paraphernalia that Lucy could see must related in some way to the practice of magic.
She leaned over, rolling her gaze, drinking in the details of the anomaly to ordinary life.
The walls of the pit were entirely covered in writing in all languages, not a single square inch left bereft of script. Writing upon writing, ten layers and many decades deep: complex mathematical calculations, astronomical predictions, life problems – demented solutions, ungodly thoughts, and twisted ideas. Seventy years of the cerebralvomit of a damaged mind, spilling out in written form all over the walls of a rancid secret.
Lucy had listened to stories of Mallette and his skewed existence for as long as she could remember, but to suddenly come face to face with the reality of him, was something she was wholly unprepared for.
She crouched at the edge of the well, twisting her squinting eyes to try and decipher some of the scrawled madness…
She could make out English, some French, Latin, something that looked distinctly Arabic, and an ancient stick-form symbology that she knew were called ‘runes’. But there was so much of it that within the stark light, it was virtually impossible to make out anything remotely intelligible, and the things that she could manage to read made little sense to the interpretations of a sane mind.
‘He must have been mad?’ she whispered to herself as her eyes drank in the sheer volume of the product of his apparent mental illnesses…
She shifted her gaze to inspect the floor of the pit. A ring of what looked like encrusted salt crystals encircled the entire circumference of the stone-flagged base, fused solid by the damp seeping up through the ground.
A five-pointed star, a pentagram, had been painted within the circle in some sort of deep red, near-black fluid, and in each corner of the triangles created by its intersecting lines, there was more Arabic writing and strange symbology, marked in the same deep-red substance.
Lucy felt a sudden urge to leave the room, to leave the building. The same urge her mother and Peter must have felt when they’d originally discovered it.
Then she heard a sound like slow breathing, and the cracking groan of weight-loaded timbers.
Lucy’s breath stuttered, terrified eyes flitting about the space, searching for the source of the sound… She scanned every darkened crevice, sensing something watching, but saw nothing, then her gaze drifted across to the large mirror hanging above the heavy, sandstone fireplace. Reflected in the dust-veiled sheet of glass, barely visible within the blackness of the room, was a crouched figure with knotted limbs, hanging high in the corner of the shelving where the walls met the ceiling, clinging to the timbers like a canker.
She snapped her head away from the reflection to where it was, but it wasn’t there? She looked back at the mirror again, and could see it, vividly.
It watched her with eyes as empty and emotionless as those of a corpse, twisting its head as it examined the terrified life cowering before it.
Paralysed with fear, her squat body began to violently shake at the sight of the apparition studying her.
It leaned forwards out of the shadows, pushing its tortured face into the light, its mouth slowly stretching open, extending down, gaping wide beneath its dead-eyed stare.
A lifeless black tongue lowered from its mouth like wet rope, hanging limp, dropping almost the length of its grotesque body.
The tip of its tongue vibrated, tasting the air. The creature exhaled a long, hollow breath. ‘Asmodeussssssssss…’ it hissed.
Lucy winced from the sound, trying desperately to animate her paralysed limbs, her mouth swinging wide, fear-formed drool dripping from her chattering jaw.
The thing began to draw its tongue slowly back into its mouth again, leaning further from the unlit corner towards her.
Lucy noticed the face and horns of a bull, then the letterbox eyes of a ram emerge from the gloom, writhing violently in the shadows behind the creature’s buckled shoulders, their horns cracking together as they wheeled with excitement. Suddenly, she realised, this thing watching her had three heads.
The shock of the vision jarred her into flight mode, and she fought through her paralysis to regain at least partial control of her limbs.
Her stuttering body twisted and fell back onto her hands. She began to scramble urgently towards the door on panicked arms, guided by the illuminated path along the ground.
She flailed frantically along the ribbon of light, manic, unblinking eyes staring dead ahead at her only possible means of escape, expecting to see the apparition cutting her off at any moment.
Two grasping hands lowered down and grabbed her arms, arresting her progress.
Lucy’s mouth bit at the air, her arid throat chocking on its inability to cry for help, until finally, she managed a scream, a shrill, manic cry that pierced the very fabric of the house.
The manacle hands gripped her tight, and lifted her off her feet.
Lucy’s pin-prick pupils turned to meet those of her captor… It was Sam! Her eyes rolled back into her lolloping head, and everything went black…