Chapter Three: The Ghost Room

It was now night and Amanda having been given the tour of nearly every nook and cranny of the Manor and Moonbeam having retired to her artist’s studio situated in the garage, stood with her father at the bottom of the hall stairs, holding a plate of cheese sandwiches in one hand, her small suitcase in the other.

Every creak of the old empty house was amplified to the point of distraction. Heard through the open kitchen doorway, the strong wind whistled down the chimney chute, making noises like a secret language.

The expectant fear that was now firmly wedged inside Amanda’s breast had been growing ever since meeting her father and his girlfriend in the library. Not since she was a child had she felt this apprehension about the encroachment of night-time.

This surprised her, thinking that she had outgrown such infantile fancies. When she was five or six years old she had picked up a book of supposedly true but uncanny tales left by her mum, her real mum. Being a precocious child she had read one story, a tale of a little boy who had wandered out into the winter night and was never seen again. What was left of the boy was a row of his footprints implanted in the compacted snow that his mother had desperately followed, only to find that they had come to an abrupt end. What came directly after these footprints was pristine virgin snow. The trepidation this narrative had created in her childish mind was the same as she felt now.

For all of her fascination with the darkest elements of the supernatural, the monsters and demons of the horror movie, she realised that she was a rationalist at heart, never really taking what she saw or read seriously. But the shock in the greenhouse, the mirrors in the library, the unnerving hints of her father and not forgetting the general threatening aura of the house, had sent her imagination into overdrive. Of course it could all still be just that, her imagination. Maybe her dad was right, she had watched too many scary films.

“This place is too big,” she said, staring up the paisley carpeted stairs to the blackness at the top, a blackness like an eternal void. “The house from outside seems small but inside it seems so huge. It’s so isolated and lonely, I am going to hate living here.”

Jonathan throw up his arms in exasperation. “Please lets not start this argument again. Give it some time and when the place has been lived in a bit I think you are going to love the place. The band will be coming down to record a new album and all our friends will be staying, including that new signing to Darkcore Records you rave about so much, so don’t worry about being lonely.”

Amanda had the childish urge, automatically rejected the moment it came into her mind, to cling tightly to her father and tell him about the thing she had witnessed in the greenhouse and at the same time urgently requesting permission to sleep in his room like she used too when she was little. Instead she moved a few steps up the staircase like someone under the influence of an alien force, towards the darkness. She almost felt the tentacles of carved shrubbery enclosing around her ankles, wanting to push her further up the stairs towards the landing.

“See you tomorrow, her dad said smiling now, “and pleasant dreams.”

“Yeah see you,” she sighed, walking quickly up the steps, facing the inevitable.

Putting the suitcase on the floor at the top of the stairs, she reached out to her left and throw a switch. The engulfing blackness was suddenly vanquished and the contrast of the light was for a few seconds dazzling. But when she timidly gazed towards her room, she found the glow emitted from the fake gas lights, attached irregularly along the corridor, extremely dim, accentuating a pervading gloom. The wood panelled walls, seemingly coloured black instead of a homily brown, seemed to stretch in both directions into another bottomless pool of darkness. She knew it was an illusion but the sense that this corridor continued forever into an utter stillness was overpowering.

A sudden pang of irrational dread, almost like a punch in the stomach rooted Amanda to the spot. There was a complete lack of sound, of the strongly gusting wind or creak of old timbers, when only moments before these sounds seemed to dominate. She desperately wished that her dad’s room (and Moonbeam’s) was directly opposite hers instead of being at the other end of the corridor. She was alone and isolated, at the mercy of any spectral terrors that might creep up on her.

More babyish feelings she thought as she made the arduous and slow effort of getting a grip on herself; the reason these noises had ceased was because they were confined to the Manor’s entrance, that was the explanation.

Taking a deep breath she turned in the direction of her bedroom, her footsteps on the uncarpeted wooden floorboards echoing loudly. It was not long before she reached her destination passing two adjacent doors leading to other rooms. Directly in front of her door was an identical one, once again dark brown, panelled and faintly whorled.

At last Amanda opened her bedroom door and stepped through the threshold.

If it was not for the faint light coming from the corridor the room would have been as dark as a windowless dungeon, thick curtains covering the one small bay window. But soft illumination soon seeped from a bulb screened in a purple lampshade with dangling cloth tassels, revealing the space of a teenager’s bedroom, now as neat and tidy as a company directors office but soon to revert to the condition of adolescent chaos.

No wood panelled walls here but plain dark blue wallpaper, ready for Amanda’s lurid metal and goth band posters to be blue tacked into place. Her single bed was pushed hard against the left wall, covered in a black duvet with matching black pillows; the top of the bed near the window, where the ceiling sloped down in the corner. Hanging over the bed was a long line of shelves, four in all, holding well thumbed paperback horror novels, fantasy stories, books on vampires, the occult and the supernatural, some classics (Frankienstien and Dracula), and what she called miscellaneous weird stuff (Burroughs and Kathy Acker).

The right wall also had shelves, next to a stereo system and speakers, wedged with shinning CD cases and some vinyl, decorated with figurines of classic movie monsters, a human skull, a coffin and a blood thirsty looking rubber vampire bat (that she would eventually get around to hanging on the ceiling).

Near those shelves was her computer standing on a polished enamel desk, glaring black, fitting in neatly with the dark coloured decor of the rest of the room. The place also contained a large widescreen TV and DVD player with a huge lived in armchair angled towards the screen (a long line of DVD’s ran the length of the wall behind the TV) and a modern dressing table with mirror and chest of draws that would contain her clothes and other oddments; the boxes of clothing left by the removal men lying unopened near the door.

Hurling the suitcase roughly onto the bed, to relieve the tension if nothing else, Amanda lowered herself into the armchair and took a bite out of a cheese sandwich, surveying her new abode. As the layout was almost exactly like her old bedroom in San Francisco, the unusual nervousness she felt was replaced for a fleeting moment by a feeling of coming home. It was her domain, her space, a place to retreat to when things got a bit too much, a sheltering womb.

But then it returned quickly to her mind that once, admittedly a long time ago, that ancient monstrosity of a mirror once hung on these walls.

She got up and closed the door slowly, the fear prominent once more. It made a slight click when it finally shut, but to Amanda it sounded like the heavy iron doors of a tomb closing forever.

Standing very still, staring at the closed door, Amanda wondered what to do next. She realised that she was very tired; it had been a very long day and she had very little sleep on the aircraft. The obvious idea of curling up underneath the duvet and finding rest was appealing but the thought of turning the light out and releasing the ever present darkness into the room was a huge deterrent.

It was no good she said to herself, she had to face her fear as the old house was her new home and there was no getting away from it. She reached out to her bedside light residing on a low table and turned it on. She then went to the switch next to the door and flicked it off.

Suddenly everything was dimmed even further and like black holes in a comforting reality, the shadows stepped out to obscure the far corners of her room. She walked slowly to the window as if stealing herself to commit a terrible act and quickly pulled back the black curtains.

The view that confronted Amanda was partly obscured by the weak illumination, so with a deep breath she turned the light out. Ivy, too much like the artificial vines and creepers enwrapping both the looking-glass and the banisters, clustered near the window’s edge, seeking to stealthily invade her insecure but only sanctuary. The obscenely profuse garden, its incredible chaos of life and the stagnant pond were covered in the murkiness of night, but at the far end of the wilderness she could just make out the dilapidated greenhouse, the moonlight unveiling it sporadically each time it escaped from its cloud cover. She shivered slightly as she thought of what was contained in that darkened shell once roofed with glittering glass; that unholy mirror.

Far clearer were the silhouetted outlines of the suburban houses, distant island cliffs of normality, their lighted windows shining like beacons above the desolate garden. In between two houses she could just glimpse the river Thames, its service rippled with the silvered reflection of the moon.

Startled by the cackle of an urban fox like a witches laugh coming directly from the garden, she almost toppled the night light in her haste to turn it on. She backed away further into her room, clasping her body with her arms, her heart suddenly at her throat.

She mumbled a swear word as she stood paralysed with fright, never before having heard the cry of a fox.

With a massive resolve she threw her self between the enclosing arms of her armchair and curled up into a ball, her knees near her chin.

After a while the death like silence became too much. She plugged in the hi-fi, grabbed a CD at random and fumbled it into the machine, pressing the play button on the remote. A solid unyielding wall of distorted guitars, drums, and yelling vocals made the speakers shake, striking her in the ears and making her flinch. Disparately grappling for the remote that she had allowed to fall on the floor in her shock, she eventually found it and turned down the volume.

Letting the powerful noise of the music wash over her, calming her with a familiar, repetitive but evolving intensity, drowning out the oppressive silence which clung tenaciously around her, she drifted into uneasy sleep.

Awaking as if crawling from a retreat of safety, Amanda found her self surrounded by silence once again, overlaid by the returning sounds of the wind and minute shifting of timbers; but what must have awoken her was the incredible rise in temperature. It was absolutely boiling, her body, still clad in jeans and sweat shirt, drenched in perspiration and her clothing sticking to her as if she had a fever. She looked at her watch; it was about twenty minutes past two in the morning, over four hours had past since she had first entered the bedroom.

Why was it so hot?

She leapt from her armchair, pulled of her sweat shirt and wiped the sweat from her face with her hand.

The fear like a briefly forgotten enemy had returned to her, heightened by the strange conditions reigning in the room. Her fright was raised to near panic levels by the fact not only of the unnatural heat but of the sudden arrival of the noises of the house.

She was immobile, unsure what to do next, when, beneath the sounds of the creaking and flexing of the Manor, she heard a soft, hardly perceptible sound of scratching coming from the wall that her bed was against.

It was regular, persistent, with a dying rhythm like the last exhausted efforts of a condemned prisoner clawing at the brick walls of its prison. It was issuing from low down, near where the wall meet the floor and it must have been coming from outside. The scratching had to be caused by a vine or a creeper moving in the wind, she desperately rationalised. If not…

Her curiosity overcoming her apprehension, she slowly moved towards the wall. Her concentration in keeping the paralysing anxiety at bay was so strong that she did not perceive that the gleam emitted from the bedside lamp had mysteriously diminished, shrinking into a tiny spark, allowing the black shadows to emerge menacingly from the corners.

When she finally reached her destination the scratching had ceased but something even more disturbing had replaced it, bringing a breathless gasp from her lips.

A softly spoken but horribly bleak female voice , fading in and out of hearing as if it came from a faulty radio, was speaking from the other side of the wall.

It whispered pleadingly, repeating its garbled message over and over, but most of its words were inaudible. She did manage to extract from the confusion, the sense that the despairing voice was calling for help and she caught the words ‘my child’ and ‘the eye, the eye,’ but beyond that no meaning could be discerned.

Amanda believed she had never felt so frightened before. She had enveloped herself in scary imagery, in the darkly supernatural, had lapped up the terrifying, immersed herself in the frightful, but these had now intruded into real life, challenging her conception of what was reality and what was imaginary. She rushed headlong, slamming the door behind her, still clutching the sweatshirt as she ran unthinkingly towards her father’s room.

Passing the stairs with their exotically carved banisters she reached the end of the corridor, still lit by the fake Victorian lamps, blocked off by a ubiquitous wood panelled wall. The terrible warmth had dissipated leaving behind the normal heat of an English summer’s night, but this observation was right at the back of her mind as she fixed her eyes onto the door of her father’s bedroom.

As she stood there numbed, a random thought involuntarily came into her mind of her dad lying in bed with Moonbeam beside him. She suddenly felt deeply uncomfortable, angry and childish all at the same time. Here she was having run away like a six year old from ridiculous terrors of the night to wake her daddy with a nonsensical tale of spectral voices and rises in temperature. She could well imagine the reaction she would get.

She felt frustrated tears streaming down her cheeks and she quickly stifled a sob. She liked to think of herself as tough, unsentimental and rebellious, a flouter of convention, someone who revelled in the horrible to shock her elders, but here she was crying like a baby.

Having calmed herself slightly, her tears drying and putting the sweatshirt back on, the thought of losing control and blubbing like a scared child now made her angry. Even so she could not face sleeping in her room. She would return and pick up her duvet, go downstairs and sleep on the settee in the sitting room. She began to step slowly down the corridor in the opposite direction.

Coming to a complete halt as she passed the landing, her eyes were on the door to her bedroom, but her mind was wondering what was wrong with the scene directly in front of her.

It came to her like a flash. The side of the passageway where her bedroom resided had transformed itself. The corridor had lengthened; on her right hand side instead of three doors there now was four. Her bedroom door had a companion, a doorway that logically must lead onto a chamber that was certainly not there before. The manor, like in a dream, had been expanded impossibly by at least four metres. There was no corresponding entrance on the opposite side of this new door and thus the wood-panelled wall which marked the end of the corridor was now at an abrupt angle.

Amanda felt giddy with bewilderment, but then the crippling and immobilising terror clutched at her insides once more, intense and physical. There was no doubt now that she was witnessing an intrusion of the supernatural, a breakage of the barrier that separated the mundane and everyday from the unfathomable. The extreme temperature, the eerie pleading voice, the cackle coming from the garden might all have some natural explanation, but this…

All her instincts told her to flee, to run, to get as far away from this situation as she possible could, but an overriding curiosity burned just as strongly. Her need to know what lay behind the phantom door was powerful, a compulsion to unveil the unknown, to stare at the forbidden.

Moving like a somnambulant she reached the entrance to the ghost room, observing that the oaken whorls on this door were older, less polished, diseased by some deforming sickness and scratched with marks.

The door was locked and no matter how hard she jiggled the doorknob, pushing her shoulder against the besmirched wood, it would not budge. Droplets of perspiration were beading on her skin once more, for this end of the corridor had deposited her back into the zone of humid temperatures. She thought she could detect a smell; an unpleasant scent of rotting wood and dying vegetation, arboreal decay like inside the greenhouse.

The instinct for flight was an imperative command screaming for attention in her head.

Deciding not to enter her room to pick up the duvet but to walk as fast as she could to the staircase, she observed a keyhole beneath the doorknob, quite large enough to be able to see what lay beyond.

As if she was a voyeur she lowered her head and peered, squinting her eye, through the hole.

She was looking at what she thought was a Victorian bed chamber, its walls smoothed over with interwoven floral patterned wallpaper, lit by a ghostly radiance of flickering candle light. An ornate brass candle stick with four prongs, hot wax running down its edges, resting on an old style dressing table, produced the illumination, vaguely revealing a sturdy looking iron bedstead in the centre with frilly, fluffy feminine coverings. A flowered china bedpan and a metal bedwarmer with a long wooden handle could just be seen poking out underneath. A window, the same as in her own room, looked out on complete darkness but for the reflected spectral shapes of the interior.

But what drew or rather tore Amanda’s eyes as if from their sockets was a mirror, the looking glass found in the greenhouse, now nailed to the right wall, immaculate and undamaged. Its every insidious detail was as clear as if an unseen bulb lit it from within. Its carvings were in ghastly motion; the tortured human shapes wroth like mutating worms, the abominable foliage wrapped around itself, moving endlessly, the fruits like overripe bags or lungs inhaling and exhaling.

Most monstrous of all were the twin eyes, at the top and the bottom of the looking-glass. They were shockingly alive, both of them bulging and pulsating, the horrid inner ichor spasmodically vibrating and gyrating in the eye sockets. The top eye burned with hatred, the bottom shook in abject fear, that if it had been attached to a mouth would be hopelessly screaming.

But it was the hate filled eye that held its slight female victim in its baleful gaze.

A young girl, not much older then Amanda, wearing a white rumpled chemise, stood barefoot before the vile glass. She was extremely thin, except for the bulge of her belly, protruding with budding new life, and her hair, blonde but unwashed and greasy, hung grass like over the mound of her pregnancy. The shape of her lips deformed by a nightmarish compulsion, her face soaked in sweat, she held shaking in her hand a surgical knife, its sharp silver blade pointed menacingly at her heart.

Suddenly reacting, her absolute terror banished for a fraction of a second by an impulse to rescue the girl from her suicide, Amanda gripped the door handle, shaking it violently, cursing loudly, while kicking viciously at the locked door. She failed in her attempt, unable even to create a dent, and exasperated, filled with total helplessness, she at last fled but tripped over the uneven surface of the floorboards, knocking her head painfully.

Getting up and clasping her head she looked back. The corridor had returned to its normal dimensions. The spectral door had vanished.

With an irritated scowl on his features, her father, tightening the belt of his silk dressing gown, came forward hurriedly. Moonbeam’s head peeked around their bedroom door, hiding her nakedness.

“What’s all this noise for Amanda, it’s nearly three in the morning!”

But she did not reply, her mind reeling. There was something else bothering her about the hellish scene in the haunted chamber, picking at the battered defences of her mental security.

She had gazed briefly into the further recesses of the mirror and behind the reflection of the tormented girl was not the expected image of the bedroom but an expanse of muddy green stone; a primeval fortress with a lofty roof made up of arched vaulting, broken by gaping holes, through which huge tropical fronds reached their swollen limbs to the cracked flooring. Black tunnels lead away on each side; a crumpling staircase, more ruin then actual stairway, rose diagonally to a tiny archway high on the wall. There were pictures directly painted on the walls, the designs of which were obscured by livid growths of fungus, pictures of grotesque monsters, reptilian and insectile. And the whole forbidding interior was awash with jungle flora; bristling vines and creepers clinging on the vertical services and clustering ferns springing from the cracks in the stone work.

Her father came closer, disturbed by her silence. Standing up, she forced back tears and brushed past him, walking rigidly to the staircase. Her dad stood still, too dumfounded by her expression to act.

Chapter Two: The Library

Sweat trickling down her face, panting for air, her mind reeling with dizziness, Amanda stood on the door step, looking up at the stretch of darkness at the top of the stairs, trying to organise her thoughts.

She had experienced a scene from the countless scary movies she had watched since she was twelve, the shock moment that always made you jump as the monster suddenly sprang into view. This made her question what she had seen. The angle of the light or the mirror’s murky surface might have transformed the reflection of her own head into a pain wracked, silently screaming thing. She only had been gazing at it for a few seconds before leaping away and maybe she had seen something that only her well primed imagination could have contrived.

Conflicting thoughts, Amanda had to admit to herself, had been struggling for dominance within her, since learning about the move to Ashbury Manor. A part of her was drawn to the prospect of living in a dwelling with a dark past, preferably a haunted house. The British Isles also had its attractions; the whole country in her imagination, prior to the move, seemed to be steeped in the shadows of ghostly ancient dread. But travelling from Heathrow through a landscape of drab suburban sprawl, not that dissimilar to Los Angeles, had disabused her of the idea. In a similar fashion so too had her frightening experience in the greenhouse, regardless of its illusory nature. These things were alright within the confines of horror films but not in reality.

Relaxing slightly, her eyes still fixed on the darkness at the top of the stairs, Amanda pondered on another strange illusion: the seemingly huge expanse of space inside that the outside could not possible hold. She remembered a book her father had lent her a few days ago, about the haunted houses of Great Britain. There was a very extensive chapter on Ashbury Manor describing its long history of disturbing supernatural occurrences. She had briefly read the author’s comment on the unnerving architectural feature of the house, creating the perception of a large space contained within a small area. The manor house was also supposed to be honeycombed with secret passageways and hidden rooms.

Amanda turned to the door on her right and entered the kitchen. She had loosely studied the plans of the house beforehand so had a vague idea of where she was going. The glaring modern surfaces of the kitchen appliances reflected the light from outside, coming from small latticed windows set above the sink, contrasting with the oldy-worldy wooden table and cupboards. Turning again she entered an expansively furnished and airy sitting room. There were rich looking Victorian armchairs and a long settee, near the french windows that looked out on the patio and neat back garden, comprising straight avenues, tidy flower beds, white statuary and deactivated water features. A stone fire-place and whorled oaken beams crossing the ceiling created the impression of upper-class respectability.

Her father and Moonbeam were not there.

This sent a little wave of anxiety to ripple through her mind, but her wristwatch told her that she had spent less time in the front garden then she had thought, only twenty five minutes at the most. She might as well do a bit of exploring before her dad with new girlfriend turned up.

Going through another door, Amanda entered the grand extent of shelving that was the library, but not before noticing that she had forgotten to clean her grubby baseball boots on the doormat, leaving dirt marks on the living rooms luxuriant Persian carpet. She groaned, knowing this was a flashpoint for a telling off.

The library was gloomy like a church, as there were only two narrow slit like stained glass windows. One looked over the wild front garden shaded by tall trees, depicting a scene of a naked Eve in Eden being tempted by the serpent, the other, this one picturing both Adam and Eve holding hands, gazed over the sedate, ordered back garden. The arched ceiling was supported by angled and horizontal Elizabethan beams, similar to those in the living room.

Most of the library walls were covered by brown coloured shelving filled to capacity with books of all shapes and sizes, placed there by the removal contractors. This was Jonathan Blake’s book collection amassed over a twenty year period, many of them unread; rare volumes of the occult arts, horror, fantasy and science fiction first editions, comics, graphic novels and music books. In addition there were two massive bookcases in the middle of the large room, containing thousands of vinyl LP’s and an array of CD’s. Between the towering stacks of recorded music was a lived in and battered armchair that stood beside an expensive stereo system.

As she passed one of three step ladders on rollers, ready for someone to reach out for the tomes on the higher shelves, she heard husky whispering and girly giggling coming from an alcove embedded directly in the centre of the wall.

With growing irritation and a certain amount of embarrassment she realised that it was her dad snogging with her ‘step-mother.’ Her instinct was to quickly and sheepishly return to the sitting room before they found out she was in the library and wait for them there, but the thought of physical contact between her father and that woman fuelled her anger.

Walking briskly Amanda entered the alcove, a false smile on her face that was more of a grimace.

“Hi dad, hi Sam, how you doing,” she said as casually as she could but unable to unclench her fists.

“What the hell” her father shouted but then suddenly changed his tone. “Jesus, what do you think you’re playing at Amanda?”

Disentangling himself from his girlfriend, he stared angrily at his daughter, while Moonbeam smoothed her hair with a mortified look on her features.

But Amanda was silent, her gaze transfixed as if hypnotised, by a huge mirror, attached to the oak panelled back wall of the small enclosure. The plain oval frame was crowned by an intricately carved eye, the width of a human hand, staring back at her as if to commit some awful crime. The sculptor’s art was so detailed that the tiny veins around its pupil could faintly be traced. The looking-glass reflected across the gap between the middle shelves, another alcove in the opposite wall, that was identical to the one in which they stood. It too had a mirror, also crowned by an eye, staring in abject fear rather then ugly malice, reflecting both Amanda, Jonathan and Moonbeam in an infinite series.

“What’s the matter, you’ve lost your voice or something,” her dad said, his arms now crossed not so much in anger but as protection against his daughter’s obvious unease.

“Answer your father, Amanda, please,” Moonbeam added, a concerned uplift of the mouth replacing the look of bewilderment on her face.

“Sorry, I didn’t know I was disturbing anything,” she lied still staring at the hideous eye. Her animosity towards Moonbeam had been abruptly replaced by the fear she had felt in the garden, that only moments ago she had rationalised away.
“I know your not telling the truth, I told you to wait for us in the sitting room,” her dad replied stiffly but then relented after a long tense silence. “But let’s forget about it for the time being, I can see you are upset by these mirrors. Come on I’ll show you the rest of the house. ”

“Where have these mirrors come from?” Amanda said gazing not at the hate filled eye now but at her own reflection. “I found one very similar thrown away in the greenhouse, except that one had foliage and twisting human shapes on its frame.” She had an urge to tell them about the horrible face that had seemingly come from within the looking-glass itself, but thought better of it.

“That’s interesting,” her father said his gaze suddenly fixed on his daughter, his eyes wide open. “So that’s were it got too, it must have been placed there by Mrs Boswell.”

“Who’s Mrs Boswell?”

“Oh, the wife of one of the former owners of Ashbury Manor. Anyway those mirrors have always been part of the house since it was built in Elizabethan times. They were made for ritual purposes by the religious sect that founded the place…” Jonathan went silent for a moment stroking his chin, a vacant expression on his face, as if thinking what to say next.

“The mirror you have found,” he continued, “was originally in the room which is now your bedroom, a long time ago though, in Victorian times. It’s a strange thing though why they were never stolen when the manor was derelict.”

As they talked the light from the lowering sun filtered through the stained glass window overlooking the front garden, emphasising Eve‘s bold nakedness and the sinuous serpent wrapped around the tree of knowledge. Extended shadows from the bookcases stretched across the floor as darkness slowly colonised the library and Amanda now deep in thought meekly followed Jonathan and Moonbeam into the sitting room, an odd chill seemingly coming from nowhere making her shiver.

Part One: The Seeds Of Evil: Chapter One: The Glass In The Garden

For all of the terrifying events that were to engulf her life in the months to come, Amanda Blake would always remember with a memory as crystal clear as a still mountain pond, arriving at Ashbury Manor and seeing it for the first time.

The BMW which her father drove, with his American girlfriend in the passenger seat, arguing about some inanity, and herself at the back, swept up the gravel driveway. She stared intently between the front seats and through the windscreen, clasping her hands around her body as if to protect herself against the evil spirit of the house, watching as the old house grow bigger and bigger in her vision.

She had seen photos of it back home in California and even then the building had seemed isolated and enclosed, exuding a threatening loneliness, a ghostly seclusion that she felt mildly attracted to. But now its overbearing separateness blocked in by large trees consumed her with feelings of entrapment, its English suburban setting contrasting blandly with the cosmopolitan bustle of her former home situated in the heart of San Francisco.

But her father Jonathan Blake was adamant about the move. His new lover Samantha Gleick aka Moonbeam Dancer-Amanda winced at such a hippie name and pointedly called her Sam-desperately wanted to come to England. His band, ‘Blood Moon’ was located in London and Jonathan desired to be close, to reconnect with his mates after a period of separation, amid rumours of a split.

Knowing his daughter’s love for the gothic he tried to appeal to her sensibilities by playing up the typically English ‘haunted house’ qualities of the Manor, but Amanda was not having it. She liked her progressive school she attended in San Francisco, had made a few like-minded friends and was getting close to a boy in her class who played bass in a black metal band. Amanda had been wrenched from all of that to move to a damp and cold country she had last seen when she was five years old, where she would have to make friends and start at a new school.

Furthermore she had the suspicion that her father was turning into Sting. She had been proud of his past rebel image, enjoying the early ‘dark pagan’ period of ‘Blood Moon’s’ career and it irritated her when he had become interested in Buddhist spirituality. Cringing inside even now, Amanda thought about her dad’s first solo album released five months ago, a dollop of complacent ambient jazz. It had waterfall sounds and bird song on it.

Amanda put the majority of the blame onto Moonbeam Dancer, a popular artist of kitsch spiritual paintings and writer of a best-selling ‘new age Christian’ self-help guide. This woman who had only been ‘part of the family’ for just under a year was already carping about Amanda’s taste for Satanic influenced goth and metal music-she liked all sorts of musical genre’s but it was metal she liked playing the most at ear splitting volume especially when Moonbeam was around.
There was one thing to look forward to, Amanda thought; leaving home and going to university, and she really did want to go, probably to study literature or philosophy. But that was at least four years away, an eternity.

The black BMW parked next to a huge removal truck that must have had difficulty getting through the gates. Men were taking heavy studio equipment around the back of the house to a one story modern annex containing a recording studio, which was attached to the left wing and extending into the well kept back garden.

Amanda’s father got out first, his face set with a blank look, his long black hair blown moodily behind him. He wore a black leather jacket, tight black jeans and an open necked shirt also black with a silver Celtic cross on a long chain, nesting between the thick hairs of his chest.

The men were preoccupied by lifting a mixing desk on to a wheeled platform, but one standing next to the truck, smoking a cigarette, smiled and then looked intently at Moonbeam as she steeped out of the car. Like Jonathan she made an eye-catching figure; blonde cascading hair whipped by the wind, smooth skinned, pale face but startling in its classical proportions and a slim but full body encased in a billowing cream coloured robe.

Jonathan and Moonbeam moved to the front door, continuing their rambling argument that had been going on since they had driven away from Heathrow airport; Amanda had lost track of what it was about, something to do with the house-warming party they were going to have in a month’s time. She could hear the grunts of the removal men as they exerted themselves and the wind gloomily rustling the leaves of the sycamores, making it cold for July, and she shivered slightly as her dad withdrew from his pocket a set of big metal keys and inserted one in the grand looking front door. It swung too with a soft creak and exposed a long dark hallway leading to a darker staircase.

“Here we are, our new home,” Jonathan said grimly, striding into the hall confidently but his face tightly set in a frown.

Amanda looked around at the oak panelled brown walls, with two ordinary doors on her left and right and the very impressive stairway, ornately carved banisters made to resemble twisting branches with strange fruits in between the foliage, at the end of the hall. As there were no windows to illuminate the interior, the only light coming from the open entrance, the hall had an extremely sombre quality like an undertaker’s parlour and the only contrast with the dark wood of the walls was the recently laid brightly patterned paisley carpet stretching from the door to the top of the stairs.

The black corridor seemed to Amanda like a tunnel leading to an obscure nightmare. The blackness emanating from the landing on the second floor was particularly impenetrable and gave the illusion of an expanse of space larger then the top floor could possible hold.

The disjointed argument between the two adults had seemingly come to an end for the time being and their was a wistful smile on her father’s face as if he had just at that moment remembered something pleasant. He had taken off his leather jacket and had hung it on a coat stand in the corner. Moonbeam had taken off her robes and revealed a cut off psychedelic patterned tee shirt, oriental jewellery draped around her neck and a long peasant skirt. A bright red jewel glistened in her navel.

Amanda noticed that her father and Moonbeam were looking at each other rather intently, a ‘loving’ smile on her ‘step-mother’s’ face. These sudden and spontaneous shows of affection towards one another was guaranteed to send a sliver of anger through her mind.

“I am going to have a look at the front garden. You two go on ahead I will meet you later,” Amanda said, suddenly thinking of an excuse to extract her self from their company.

“OK, I suppose so,” her dad replied rather warily, his frown returning. “We will wait for you in the living room.’

On entering the front garden, via a lattice-frame archway set in the high, unkempt hedge, she was struck by the contrast of two different worlds. From the ordered symmetrical confines of the gravel forecourt and the bleak hall to a riotous anarchy of uncut and abundant green grass, scattered with nettles, weeds and the flowers of wild plants, forming a small wall as high as her hips.

She stood on a narrow strip of cracked pavement riddled with colonising plant-life, hearing the buzz of insects, the rustle of the wind through the tall grass and feeling the pollen enriched atmosphere. The right wing of the house glowered over this wilderness like the face of a weather beaten old giant. The top window of the room that she believed was to be her bedroom, just underneath the triangle of the eaves, was like the ogre’s single eye staring intently down at her.

Straight in front of where Amanda was standing and across the unruly lawn, at the edge of the disused garden, was a gnarled and ancient willow, its branches and leaves sweeping down in a cascade of pale emerald. It almost blocked the view beyond but she could make out some typically dull suburban housing, from whose top floors there must be good views over this almost secret garden. Her eyes were then attracted by the sight of a discarded and shattered greenhouse at the far-right hand corner, its interior literally overrun by its contents. Every vegetable and plant matter conceivable had seemingly sprouted out and around the crumbling frame; what glass was left was slick with fungus and moss.

The gloom that had settled on her since the long flight from California lifted slightly at the sight of this overcrowded and wondrous lushness. What an adventure playground of the imagination this garden could be, appealing to a hankering for her childhood. As if to reflect her mood change the sun came out from behind swiftly flowing clouds, washing the garden in light, exenterating the green profusion.

She decided to explore further with the aim of making her way to the greenhouse, discerning an overgrown path leading in that direction, and as it was at the far reaches she would be able to discover much in between. It was an arduous journey through this domestic jungle, thankful that she was wearing a sweat shirt and tough blue jeans as she lost count of how many times she was scratched and tugged as she forced her way through nettles and shrubbery. Almost she fell into a weed clogged and stagnant pond as the uncertain path swerved around it, but eventually she came to the greenhouse and a mouldering, lichen covered wall beyond it, dividing the Ashbury Manor property from a stretch of untidy no-mans land, which in turn kept suburbia at bay.

The sun and her exertions had caused sweat to come out on Amanda’s forehead, so she rested by leaning against a rusting lawn roller, which lay beside the growth entangled entrance to the greenhouse. The smell of verdant luxuriance and rotting wood was overpowering when she finally peered into the emerald shade of the opening.

Wooden benches were at an advanced stage of decomposition, swarming with greenery and plant-life that entwined with the original occupants in their broken pots. A long line of ants crawled at her feet to an earthen mound beneath one table, which moved and rippled with their minute bodies. She pushed herself further in feeling very uncomfortable when something briefly crawled across her head.

It was then that she spied the object tucked horizontally under one of the benches. From where she crouched on her haunches it looked like a large oblong slab of timber. By manoeuvring on her hands and knees, carefully watching out for splinters of glass and any wriggling creepy-crawlies, she went beneath the table and had a close look.

Even then it seemed to Amanda like a lump of disused timbering maybe once part of the house. But she studied it more intently and she realised that she was looking at the frame of a large oval mirror.

Although it must have lain there for many years the intricate carving around its rim had not been eaten away by wood burrowing insects or dissolved by fungi, but remained intact On one side was a complex leaf and branch motif shared with the banisters of the staircase-the exotic ripe fruits bulging from the wooden fronds. Contrasting vividly with the artificial foliation was the side furthest away from her where hundreds of agonised human shapes, both male and female, were bundled together, the artistry producing the illusion of movement, the undulation and writhing of worms.

Looking closer she noticed the faces were finely chiselled into grimaces or screams of pain. The bodies were indistinct and were indistinguishable from each other, but the faces had been carved with minuscule detail; furthermore the contrasting scenes of copious nature and tortured humanity were joined at the top and bottom by a large staring eye, the higher one swollen with sinister intent, the lower one transfixed with fear.

Amanda felt a shiver of pleasurable revulsion convulse her body as she took in this hideous but artfully designed artefact. The glass in the middle of the frame was not intact but was shattered and one side completely gone, revealing the wood beneath. The glass that did remain was smeared with dirt and living growths and she could not see her reflection. Instinctively she brushed the covering gentle away, exposing a young woman’s face, indistinct and cracked in many places by the damaged surface of the mirror.

As it was getting uncomfortable warm and she had the desire to tell somebody about her discovery-the looking-glass was grotesquely beautiful and would appeal to her dad-she began to delicately manoeuvre herself backwards. But then from the corner of her eye, she caught movement from within the depths of the glass.

Amanda looked closer and then without warning a head throw itself soundlessly against the inner surface of the mirror, its mouth open in a silent scream.

In a shocked reflex motion she leapt from her crouching position, only hitting her head against the underside of the wooden bench in the process. The pain combined with the horrific sight of the staring and emaciated visage, that spasmodically jerked against the barrier of the mirror, seemingly trapped within its confines, sent a strangled cry issuing from her mouth.

Blundering mindlessly from the greenhouse, not caring about her apparel anymore, just wishing to escape, she ran as quickly as she could down the overgrown path and out of the chaotic garden, desperately wanting any comfort that another person could provide.

This was just the beginning. The night was to come.

Prologue: Doctor Baldwin's Manuscript

“Now, if you’ll only attend, Kitty, and not talk so much, I’ll tell you all my ideas about Looking-glass House. First, there’s the room you can see through the glass-that’s just the same as our drawing-room, only the things go the other way. I can see all of it when I get upon a chair-all but the bit just behind the fireplace. Oh! I do so wish I could see that bit. I want so much to know whether they’ve a fire in the winter: you never can tell, you know, unless our fire smokes, and then smoke comes up in that room too-but that may be only pretence, just to make it look as if they had a fire. Well then, the books are something like our books, only the words go the wrong way: I know that, because I’ve held up one of our books to the glass, and then they hold up one in the other room.”

Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There by Lewis Carroll


As she sat at her small Formica desk in her study, Melanie tried to make sense out of the chaotic evidence. The soft light of an anglepoise lamp created an island of isolation, enabling her to concentrate her mind on the untidy papers and files scattered haphazardly across her desk, but any sense or meaning concerning the mystery eluded her. She rested her back against the swivel chair and chewed the end of her pen, her thoughts distracted.

Vivid in her memory was the police photograph taken from inside the labyrinth of cellars and vaults beneath Ashbury Manor as part of the investigation into the disappearance of celebrity rock guitarist, Jonathan Blake, (whose property this was) and his family. She had a copy of it, tucked away safely beneath reports collected from different sources, some official, some unofficial. The photo could have been a still from a particularly surreal horror film. The photographer had taken the picture on the other side of an enormous well or hole in the floor of a cavernous crypt. Two stone columns entwined with thick vines and bizarre brightly coloured foliage, seemingly issuing from the cavity, held a body in a cruciform position. Although emaciated, almost skeletal, like well preserved corpses from an airless tomb, one was still recognisable male, the other female-it was as if the thick, clinging greenery had sucked the very life force from their bodily frames.

Melanie then found herself looking at another photo sticking out from the thick wad of documents. She grasped its edge and gently pulled it free, staring idly at the picture of an ‘alternatively dressed’ teenager. This was Amanda Blake, daughter of the murdered Jonathan Blake; now seventeen if still alive, but when the picture had been taken nearly two years ago, a year before her disappearance, was fifteen.

She had raven black hair with purple streaks almost reaching to her waist, a round, pale and unsmiling face but with intelligent green eyes, black lipstick and pierced nose. She was wearing a tee shirt with a garish logo of a goth metal band, fronting a scene of bloody zombies arising from the graves of a desecrated church yard, and an old frayed leather jacket that went with a pentagram pendant around her neck and a brightly coloured friendship band around her wrist. A dark purple Edwardian skirt fell to her booted ankles.

The girl had been missing for nearly two years now, probably murdered like her father. The police had carried out an extensive search and the publicity in the media was intense, but so far nobody had come forward with any leads or sightings of the whereabouts dead or alive of Amanda Blake.

This extraordinarily bright adolescent had a reputation as a rebel with an unhealthy interest in the occult, heavy metal music and horror movies, but looking closer into her personal history there was nothing particular abnormal about her, except she was the daughter of a rock star. She was described as moody and at times withdrawn, she listened to cacophonous music and liked to shock. But wasn’t this normal teenage behaviour?

Rubbing her tired eyes wearily with her fingers, Melanie looked at her wristwatch and noticed nearly half an hour had passed in unfocused contemplation since she had sat down at her desk. The forces of law and order were no nearer in solving this odd and puzzling crime, so what hope did she have in playing detective. She might as well concentrate her mind on the article she was to write for the local paper; the deadline for submission was only a week away.

As Melanie switched on her computer, she suddenly decided on the spur of the moment to read through, once again, the only remnants of a mysterious manuscript before starting work. She found the photocopy at the top of the pile of documents.

This was evidence as bizarre in its own way as the disturbingly strange police photograph. Written in an almost ineligible hand, using a rather pompous and old-fashioned syntax, it was the beginnings of a long and rambling discourse. The first pages, the rest lost or consumed by flame, were found near the murder site underneath the Tudor manor house. It described things if not of a fantastical nature were certainly bordering on it, confirming the authorities assessment of the author as a lonely individual prone to mental illness and delusions of grandeur.

Nobody took this piece of evidence seriously but Melanie was drawn to it if only for the reason it may offer further clues. She picked up the photocopied sheets and began to read carefully.

When that scared young girl and her rock star father first made my acquaintance I had never really pondered the nature of evil. I mean the real nature of evil, not the mere consequences of a deeply foolish act or the results of mindless malice or hatred as bad as these are, but a self-consciously embraced metaphysic of wickedness. The studies of my former role as a historian acquainted me with all manner of foul deeds of the past, murder, rapine and mutilation, but the persons behind these awful acts were driven by unconscious impulses, hidden desires surging uncontrollable to the surface or a passion for an ideal which had blinded them to the horror they were committing, not a cool, rational, even intellectual acceptance of iniquity.

As an investigator into the paranormal and the occult I, Dr Baldwin, seek the truth and like a detective I apprehend the guilty. My efforts of research and study revolved around what you might call poltergeist activity, strange and ghostly sights in old houses and debunking the fake medium-now it is far more than this.

The depths of immorality I have had to uncover in this particular case, the nightmares, the sickening fear, the unbearable sight of depravity have only contributed to cement my commitment, to stiffen my resolve, so as to protect the unwary and the innocent.

Thus my story stands as a testament to a battle raging virtually unseen beneath the service of everyday reality but also a warning. Most will be unable to believe what I have written. Only a few perceptive persons will gain a hint of the size of the black hole devouring us all.

A terrifying chasm has been opened up.

Melanie finished reading the introductory section, a wry smile briefly animating her face. She flicked the page over and began the main narrative.

Ever since moving to Walton-on-Thames I had been fascinated by the uncanny stories connected to Ashbury Manor. It nestled like something lost from the time of Elizabeth the First amongst the non-descript, modern but leafy suburbs of South West London. Having both a personal and professional interest in the supernatural it was just waiting to exert its influence on my imagination.

How was I to know that what started out as a mild diversion from my other concerns at the time was to shatter my life for good.

I had decided to purchase a small terraced house in Walton mainly because it was near my place of work (l lecture part-time at Kingston University about five miles distant) and was well populated and near enough to London for my own personal practice-Baldwin’s, Private Investigator of the Paranormal and Occult Sciences. For twenty years I had lived in the town of Ulverston in Cumbria where I made a meagre living out of writing academic works on folk beliefs and the occult. It was here that I decided upon the path of investigator, having an important but minor role in the arrest of the notorious black magician Charles Marlowe. Marlowe as everyone knows was a practitioner of the esoteric arts, a writer on the subject as well as a mass murderer. His elaborate occult theories were intrinsically linked to his motives and that is why I was invaluable to the police.

Now here I was in a new town and I must admit that I found it totally lacking in the roots connecting it to the dark past; so the first thing I do, yes I admit, to cheer myself up, is visit the library to uncover a bit of lurking ancient history. It was the worst mistake of my life.

At first the library only confirmed my suspicions about the place. It was your typical suburban branch containing a very limited supply of material; trashy popular fictions from romance to ridiculous sci-fi, a children’s section all decorated in garish colours in a desperate attempt to entice the little tykes from the TV screen and their computers, and god forbid even DVD’s and CD’s, representing what was the most awful in today’s culture; Hollywood and pop music. What had happened to the art of reading I asked myself? Of course tucked away you found your classic 19^th century novel, the odd scholarly history tome (not to be confused with the populist tripe clogging up the history shelves) and would you believe it some readable and well-researched books on the paranormal and the supernatural, which was not your usual sensationalist garbage.

I went straight to the local history section and my heart sank. It seemed to me that as far as Walton-on-Thames was concerned history began only when the railway arrived in the Victorian period. For hundreds of years the area had been a conservative farming community which had witnessed some excitement during the turbulent period of the English Civil War.

But I was not to be deterred, I am a delver into the murkier parts of time after-all. I dug through the albums of tedious old photographs and scrapbooks by local non-entities from the last two hundred years, until I found what I was later to discover was a gem of blackest hue. It was a small book written in the 1920’s by the late Sir William Barrett. Its title was simply ‘The Dark Past of Ashbury Manor.’

I knew of Sir William Barrett, an eccentric business man, landowner and amateur historian, writer of many obscure historical pamphlets from the 1900’s until his mysterious death in 1929. I had come across him when as a young man at Oxford I was doing research for my Masters degree on the Tudor aristocracy. Barrett’s early work on the Elizabethan era was well respected by serious scholars of the period but he had fallen out with the academic profession with his later writings. The tatty reprint of 1978 I held in my hands was from the later period.

In the mid 1970’s when I was a postgraduate I held only a passing interest in the occult otherwise I would have been tempted to delve further into the last years of Sir William’s life. All I knew of the shadowy side to William Barrett’s life was his purchasing of an Elizabethan manor house in a south-east town close to London and his move had marked the unbalancing of his mental stability. According to most of his academic colleagues, his pamphlets from then on increasingly showed an overactive interest in ghosts, witchcraft, demonology and especially the complex brand of mysticism connected to the Judaic faith called the Kabbalah.

The manner of his dying stuck particularly in my mind as it would anybody’s. His death had proven to his distracters that he had indeed been mad. His emaciated and decomposing body was discovered in one of the rooms of the manor after he had been missing for over six months. Grotesquely on examination the pathologist found he had begun to eat the flesh of his own hands. Ultimately they came to a grim conclusion; he had deliberately locked himself into a secret room and starved himself to death. But the housekeeper was certain she had heard no cries or even the rooms’ existence.

On seeing the name of Sir William Barrett this came back to me and I must admit I felt a thrill of excitement. So it was Walton-on-Thames that he had come to reside in and his place of abode was Ashbury Manor. Walton did have its history and as I was to read later in the comfort of my own study an extremely sinister one.

I read ‘The Dark History of Ashbury Manor’ in one sitting that very evening. I thought the book fascinating but I have to admit at this juncture I found it only pleasantly ‘spooky,’ rather then horrifying.

It begins with a short account of the founding of the manor in 1564 by an obscure religious sect, originally situated in the northern town of Lancaster. They had fled from fierce popular anger aimed at their unusual spiritual beliefs and rumoured practices. As far as Sir William can gather their doctrines were Gnostic in origin and there was evidence that they had ancestral links with the heretical Cathars wiped out by the Catholic Church in the Middle Ages.

They were lead by a man called George Browne, an architect and a mason, a close friend of the most prominent landowner of the area. The landowner whose name passes me by gave Mr Browne and his followers some land in which to farm and provided some of the funds to build a large communal house overlooking the Thames, which came to be called Ashbury Manor. The Manor was designed by George Browne but was modelled on your average Tudor manor house, although the interior was decidedly odd-as I was about to find out. I won’t go into details now but you will understand as my narrative unfolds that the word odd is very much an understatement.

The settling of this cult amongst the deeply conservative and god-fearing villagers of Walton-on-Thames was bound to cause friction but nothing to suggest the horrific act of violence that was to engulf this tiny rural community on Halloween night of 1573.

As early as a year before the coming of the group, the Parson of St Mary’s had officially petitioned the local landowner against the blasphemous rabble, mentioning in passing that such a settlement of people would result in the stiffest resistance from the populace, the Church and the authorities.

It was not long after their arrival that wild rumours circulated around the vicinity; they shared their women in common and held orgiastic rites, worshipped the devil, and most ghastly of the lot, they sacrificed young children to their evil god by bricking them up alive in the walls of Ashbury Manor.

But the parson failed with his plea to the authorities as they remained indifferent, the Church did their best but lost interest when the secular authorities did not want to take action and as the group kept to themselves and rarely ventured out of their compound, the populace soon forgot about them.

But in the summer of 1573 the area was hit by bad harvests. This coincided with the desecration of St Mary’s Church when vandals placed obscene carvings on the altar, followed in the autumn by the mysterious disappearance of a young child from nearby. Things came to a head on Halloween night when singing, chanting and general merry-making emanating from the Manor was reported to the Parson. A crowd of villagers soon gathered lead by the Parson and marched on the Manor.

What followed was an act of mob violence unprecedented in this sleepy corner of Surrey. According to the tracts of the time which are vague to say the least, the occupants of Ashbury Manor were caught engaged in acts of vile debauchery. This was the last straw as far as the mob was concerned who blamed the bad harvests, the desecration of the Church and the disappearance of the youngster on the occupants.

They were forcibly dragged, men, women and children, into a nearby field were they were viciously cut-down by a crude collection of farm implements wielded by the peasants of Walton. Presided over by the Parson their bodies were ceremoniously burnt; some reports say that the Waltonites danced around the bonfires screaming and shouting in ecstasy and blood lust.

There were no repercussions against the Parson or the villagers and the whole grisly incident was almost totally forgotten. Strangely the local residents did not vent their anger on the Manor and left the place intact. It was sold a year later by the landowner to a merchant family from London.

　

The next couple of paragraphs of the manuscript were unreadable, besmirched with a large black burn mark in the middle of the page. Melanie when she had first began to read Dr Baldwin’s story had even found the last passages difficult to read as they were pock marked as if with rust. But she now carried on her reading quite easily as she was familiar with its contents.

Sir William in the concluding parts of his booklet writes about the peculiar nature of the interior architecture which I was to experience first hand; visitors to the building could feel disorientated and on some occasions lose their way, afterwards talking about passageways and chambers that were not there. The disquieting paranormal activity encountered by past residents, the sudden rises in temperature experienced in some of the rooms and the feeling of dread and unease produced only on certain days of the year were also discussed.

At the end of his little tome Sir William says he has unearthed some hefty writings on Cabalistic occult theory by the founder of Ashbury Manor, George Browne. Writings which and I quote, “have produced terrible conflicting feelings of fear and trepidation on the one hand, feelings that have brought me actual sympathy, horrible though it may be to admit it, with that Elizabethan parson and his ignorant flock and on the other emotions of fascination, excitement and even joy, activated in the dedicated historian by his art of uncovering secrets not meant for Christian mortals. I have made up my mind to continue with my research and dam the consequences.”

From then onwards Sir William Barrett’s later work was to heavily concentrate on the darkest side of the supernatural, leading eventually to his banishment from the academic community of historians and maybe the unhinging of his mind.

I finished reading just after midnight and I was consumed with curiosity. I had to get my hands on the work of George Browne mentioned in Sir William’s tract. The item should not be too arduous to find, even if it meant a visit to the British Library. But first I meant to take a look at the centre of this weird story which was not a difficult task as the Manor was only a walk away from my house.

The next evening was clear but breezy, like it had been throughout July, when I walked down the towpath beside the Thames towards Molesey. I turned after passing the Rose Garden and recreation ground, following a narrow well-heeled residential street until I got to the hill.

Near the top the hill was blocked by a moss-covered and rather dilapidated brick wall that curved

round its edge. In its centre was a modern looking gate, which I assumed opened and shut electronically, contrasting with the vine-entangled and lichen infested old stone posts on either side. I looked up the long driveway through the iron railings of the gate and as the full moon was shining directly above, although occasionally covered by clouds, I could make out Ashbury Manor on the top of the rise.

There were no streetlights here and the Manor had very little artificial illumination of its own so without the moon it would have been just a black indistinct blob. But now I could make out a large timber framed Elizabethan manor house, two floors high with two wings attached to its central section, its stone slated roof and three chimneys crooked and uneven. On first acquaintance due to the effect of the evening light, the building had the unsettling appearance of an ugly and squat toads head.

I could not make out its garden because on the right side of the drive was a high hedge. Tall sycamore trees grow like an organic wall to one side of the property enclosing the grounds in dark shadows; if you looked closely small bats fluttered in and out of the eaves of the house. There was some lighting coming from the garages on the left. The second garage door was open and through the indistinct light of a hanging bulb I could make out the aerodynamic lines of a black BMW with its bonnet up. A shapeless figure was bending over the automobile tinkering with its engine.

My eyes moved to the house again and they were caught by another. Beneath the eaves of the right-wing of the house, seemingly to stare directly at me out of an illuminated window, which a few moments before had not been lit-up, was a girl of about fifteen or sixteen years of age. Her stare, frightened and helpless I thought at the time, sent a jolt through my frame like electricity. This girl was Amanda who was going to play a major part in my life. I quickly moved away, guiltily feeling like a voyeur and retired to the nearby pub, the Old Manor Inn.

In the pub which was oldy-worldy, compact and cosy with an ageing clientele, I got talking to the middle-aged barman. He told me, rather derisively I thought, that the Manor had recently been purchased by Jonathan Blake, the lead guitarist of the famous ‘goth-rock’ band ‘Blood Moon.’ He along with his new lover and his daughter had moved in that day.

I admitted to the barman that I had never heard of the group, being a self-confessed hater of rock music. The barman concurred and he started to talk about the recent history of the old house that I could just glimpse rising above the roofs from the open doorway of the inn. The light was still shinning from that forlorn window like a weak signal of distress. Ashbury Manor had remained deserted since the 1930’s, the barman continued to tell me, when the last owner, an eccentric recluse and a professor or academic of some kind (Sir William Barrett, I informed him), had committed suicide. Afterwards no one would buy the Manor, not even the National Trust and the place fell into ruin. The house was considered haunted and even kids who are usually attracted to abandoned buildings shunned it. According to stories told around the common room of the homeless hostel in Kingston, vagrants unlucky enough to squat there had stayed no longer then one night, too traumatized to speak of what they had witnessed.

Local residents reported seeing eldritch lights glowing from top story windows and spine chilling noises issuing from the grounds in the dead of night, even spectral figures moving in sinister fashion downstairs, glimpsed through the open wound of the entrance. As recently as a month ago the building contractors and landscape gardeners, employed by the new residents, had been reluctant to work because of the place’s reputation, delaying the renovation for weeks. The front garden was still in a chaotic shape untouched since the early part of the century.

I was thinking all the while how I could get permission to see Ashbury Manor from the inside. The best option would be to introduce myself to the Blake’s by knocking on their front door, but being celebrities this could be difficult. The next few weeks I conducted further research into the old dwelling and came up with two disturbing pieces of information. Then Amanda Blake with her father arrived in a distraught state at my house…

The sound of rain hitting the window of Melanie’s study distracted her attention, but she had finished reading what remained of the manuscript and throw it back on to the desk. Nothing more had come to her during her perusal of the document and her eyes were growing heavy with tiredness.

The wind was gusting harder then it had been a few minutes ago and her gate that lead to the side entrance of her house was rattling nervously, opening and shutting. She stared at her reflection thrown by the lamp in the rain spattered pane, unable to see anything outside but a twitching limb of the apple tree, close up against the glass. Her neck felt stiff and she massaged it gently, groaning at the lateness of the hour.

Stretching languorously, letting out a deep yawn, she stood up and went into the hall meaning to get her raincoat and to step out into the unruly weather to secure her gate. She could hear it from here, its motion creating a rhythmic counterpoint to the rushing rain filled wind, but this sound was suddenly driven from her mind by the shrill ringing of her telephone.

Picking up the receiver, idly wondering who this could be at one in the morning, Melanie heard the instantly recognisably voice of the editor of the Surrey Gazette, the paper she worked for, dead-pan and weary

“Hi, this is Mike; I have someone here sitting with me you will be very interested in.”

For the first few seconds, Melanie was taken aback unable to find anything to say, but she quickly rallied.

“It better be someone interesting, calling me at this time of night. So who is this mystery person you have with you.”

There was a silence for a few brief moments in which time Melanie heard the rain intensify.

“Amanda Blake,” Mike said.