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.